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Re: A modest proposal

2013-01-23 11:01:35
On 1/23/13 1:27 AM, Hannes Tschofenig wrote:
Hi Brian, Hi Joel,

the point of my mail was not to start a discussion about the examples I provided but to 
note that the suggested "let's reduce complexity by reducing options" is not as 
easy as it sounds in practice.
The prototypical human enterprise has need to innovate which means finding a way to bring products and services which people want buy to market. This process is both one of discovery and failure (market signals). Part of the process which respond(s) in an inverse fashion to market signals is effort required for standardization (e.g. increased demand and therefore resources makes it harder not easier). It is is relativity easy at the margins to wing documents for things which nobody really cares about through the IETF (one can contrast this with other standardization processes if you like), the result being that you have a record of a diversity of lightly used but possibly important to someone or potentially no-one solutions. When you have a great number of groups involved in the development of what is currently a hot area of work, the amount of effort associated with getting those drafts through a process is dramatically larger, they are subject to evolutionary pressure, and they have to satisfy the needs of a great number of constituents, that probably if not always produces a better outcome as far as utility, and interoperability as concerned but the efforts at the margins don't stop because of it.
In the context of the document Stephen wrote and the proposal that was made on 
the list I was wondering whether a bit more analysis about what the problems we 
are trying to solve would be helpful. As some folks had raised implementing 
specifications is not a sufficient condition for interoperability, or 
successful deployment. I personally believe that IETF working groups are a fine 
job in writing code along with their specification work.

Ciao
Hannes

On Jan 23, 2013, at 9:58 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

On 23/01/2013 04:14, joel jaeggli wrote:
On 1/22/13 12:34 AM, Hannes Tschofenig wrote:
Another example from a different area: Why do we need so many
transition technologies for the migration from IPv4 to IPv6? Wouldn't
it be less complex to just have one transition mechanism?
You mean no transition mechanisms...
That was, in fact, the plan (dual stack during coexistence).
It went wrong.

  Brian


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