Hi John,
On Aug 15, 2012, at 3:41 PM, John E Drake wrote:
JD: To what purpose? As an aside, I get the 'feel-good' aspect, but is
there anything more?
I like the term - IAB documents as 'feel-good' publications.
The IAB publishes a variety of different documents. Some of them are formal
communication interactions with other organizations and others are documenting
topics that could be of interest to the IETF community or even beyond. These
documents are not enforceable in a legal sense (which is good).
The content of this specific document did not surprise you and, as a regular
IETF participant, it shouldn't. You look at the list of principles and they
sound familiar - they make sense (at least to most of us, as folks noted in
this discussion thread). The 'Openness', for example, is in my view extremely
important since it allows relevant stakeholders to participate: Think about how
low the barrier is to participate in the IETF. If you believe that the process
has any impact on the quality of the specifications then the principles listed
in the document may resonate with you.
Many may consider these principles as so obvious that they are not worthwhile
to write down. Unfortunately, they are not as obvious as one might think. There
are other ways to do standardization and, as we have seen in the discussions on
this list, some would like to change the rules of the game. I believe that this
will have negative consequences for the Internet eco-system and for the speed
of innovation we had gotten so used to.
Whether this document can prevent bad things from happening is of course a
separate story but it, at least, captures the views of a list of organizations
active in Internet standardization.
I hope that this makes sense to you.
Ciao
Hannes