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Re: Alternative decision process in RTCWeb

2013-11-30 08:54:26
On 11/29/2013 04:27 AM, Carsten Bormann wrote:
On 29 Nov 2013, at 00:05, Cullen Jennings <fluffy(_at_)iii(_dot_)ca> wrote:

As a quick cheat sheet to where browser vendors might stand on this matter...
Thanks.

In a similar vein, can anyone point out what we get if the IETF were to agree 
on a single MTI video codec for WebRTC?
What is the upside to making this herculean effort?


The relevant section is section 2.3 of draft-ietf-rtcweb-overview.

2.3.  On interoperability and innovation

   The "Mission statement of the IETF" [RFC3935] states that "The
   benefit of a standard to the Internet is in interoperability - that
   multiple products implementing a standard are able to work together
   in order to deliver valuable functions to the Internet's users."

   Communication on the Internet frequently occurs in two phases:

   o  Two parties communicate, through some mechanism, what
      functionality they both are able to support

   o  They use that shared communicative functionality to communicate,
      or, failing to find anything in common, give up on communication.

   There are often many choices that can be made for communicative
   functionality; the history of the Internet is rife with the proposal,
   standardization, implementation, and success or failure of many types
   of options, in all sorts of protocols.

   The goal of having a mandatory to implement function set is to
   prevent negotiation failure, not to preempt or prevent negotiation.

   The presence of a mandatory to implement function set serves as a
   strong changer of the marketplace of deployment - in that it gives a
   guarantee that, as long as you conform to a specification, and the
   other party is willing to accept communication at the base level of
   that specification, you can communicate successfully.

   The alternative - that of having no mandatory to implement - does not
   mean that you cannot communicate, it merely means that in order to be
   part of the communications partnership, you have to implement the
   standard "and then some" - that "and then some" usually being called
   a profile of some sort; in the version most antithetical to the
   Internet ethos, that "and then some" consists of having to use a
   specific vendor's product only.