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Re: Is the IETF aging?

2012-05-04 20:58:23
On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 9:50 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker 
<hallam(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 3:14 PM, Hannes Tschofenig
<hannes(_dot_)tschofenig(_at_)gmx(_dot_)net> wrote:
Hi PHB,

the IETF is not like an enterprise where you can decide (as part of the 
hiring process) what characteristics your employees should have.

True, but that does not mean that you should decide that there is
nothing the IETF can do to change those characteristics or is in fact
doing albeit unintentionally.

So, what would you do to adjust things ?

Regards
Marshall



In a volunteer organization the offered topics drive the participation. Ask 
yourself: what you as someone who just finished a university education want 
to hang around in the IETF to standardize yet another IPv4/IPv6 transition 
mechanism or to participate in the MPLS-TP discussions?

That is one aspect that might influence the decision. But there is a
huge amount of Internet development going on right now and the mean
age of the developers writing protocols is likely in the 20s.

The IETF has a security area and an Apps area, its not just routing.


When people suggest new work to the IETF they often see a strange reaction. 
I remember when Mozilla came to the IETF and proposed to work on the privacy 
topic "Do Not Track". I couldn't find support for doing the work in the 
IETF. I don't exactly know why people didn't like it but the W3C immediately 
picked it up and had seen lots of new companies (mostly from the advertising 
industry) joining the W3C.


And often the people who show them the door are people who contribute
absolutely nothing to the process other than their opinion. They don't
have any pull with the parties that are needed to act to deploy, they
don't have any real technical chops, they don't even have official
positions often.

But when proposals are raised in IETF it only takes five or six people
in a WG who bring nothing to the table to kill an idea.

Now that might be justified if the argument was that the idea was
likely to cause actual damage. But when the argument is 'I am not
convinced of the need for this' well whats the point?


I have just finished a couple of drafts that I have strong backing for
in my industry. The decision to deploy or not will be taken by my
industry, not the IETF.

The reason I raised this is that I can see a generation gap in my
industry. The IETF has ceased to be the leading force in PKI standards
development because the younger engineers don't want to have to engage
here.



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Website: http://hallambaker.com/

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