Re: "why I quit writing internet standards"


On Apr 14, 2014:12:07 PM, at 12:07 PM, Alia Atlas 
<akatlas(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 11:57 AM, David Meyer <dmm(_at_)1-4-5(_dot_)net> 
wrote:

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 8:08 AM, George, Wes 
<wesley(_dot_)george(_at_)twcable(_dot_)com> wrote:

I’m surprised that no one has sent this out yet:
http://gigaom.com/2014/04/12/why-i-quit-writing-internet-standards/

"Summary: After contributing to standards organizations for more than seven
years, engineer Vidya Narayanan decided it was time to move on. Although she
still believes that these organizations make the Internet a better place,
she wonders about the pace of change versus the pace of organizations."

My thoughts-

There are some nuggets of truth in what she says in this article, and in
some of the comments. I think that the problems are real, so there’s value
in taking the criticism constructively, despite the fact that the author
chose to focus on the problems without any suggestions of solutions.

"while the pace at which standards are written hasn’t changed in many years,
the pace at which the real world adopts software has become orders of
magnitude faster."
…
"Running code and rough consensus, the motto of the IETF, used to be
realizable at some point. … In the name of consensus, we debate frivolous
details forever. In the name of patents, we never finish.”
…
"Unless these standards organizations make radical shifts towards
practicality, their relevance will soon be questionable.”

I don’t have too many big ideas how to fix these problems, but I’ll at least
take a crack at it in order to spur discussion. My paraphrase of the problem
and some discussion follows.

- We’ve lost sight of consensus and are too often derailed by a vocal
minority of those willing to endlessly debate a point.

Part of the solution to that is reiterating what consensus is and is not,
such as draft-resnick-on-consensus so that we don’t confuse a need for
consensus with a need for unanimity. Part of the solution is IETF leadership
helping to identify when we have rough consensus encumbered by a debate that
will never resolve itself, without quieting actual disagreement that needs
continued discussion in order to find a compromise. I don’t have good
suggestions on how to make that second half better.

- We don’t have nearly enough focus on running code as the thing that helps
to ensure that we’re using our limited cycles on getting the right things
out expediently, and either getting the design right the first time, or
failing quickly and iterating to improve

The solution here may be that we need to be much more aggressive at
expecting any standards track documents to have running code much earlier in
the process. The other part of that is to renew our focus on actual interop
standards work, probably by charter or in-group feedback, shift focus away
from BCP and info documents. Perhaps when considering whether to proceed
with a given document, we need test as to whether it’s actively
helpful/needed and ensure that we know what audience would be looking at it,
rather than simply ensuring that it is “not harmful” and mostly within the
WG’s chartered focus.


My friend @colin_dixon pointed this out to me yesterday, and I've been
giving it quite a bit of thought since then (I have a nascent blog on
the topic of how open source and standards orgs might
productively/efficiently work together; follow up to
http://www.sdncentral.com/education/david-meyer-reflections-opendaylight-open-source-project-brocade/2014/03).

What I can say is that after seeing the kind of progress that several
open source communities make (they do epitomize the best of the IETF's
running code/rough consensus ethic), one does have to wonder if
traditional standards making is either obsolete or in dire need of a
make over. What is needed, IMO, is a reimagining of how the standards
process interacts with the open source movement specifically focused
on how they can compliment one another.


[Alia] It would be very useful to have a functional model for how the
two can compliment each other.  We also tend to talk about open-source
as a single monolith - when it can have very different models for
accepting in changes, how and who runs the community, who is really
participating (open source doesn't mean non-corporate) etc.   Some of
what the IETF does is the architecture and requirements thinking about
how the solution should fit in - while some of the open-source is
about getting a solution implemented ASAP.   IMHO, a spiral is useful
with an easy way of interaction.  With I2RS, as a WG chair, I
suggested having experimental drafts describing solutions that were
being implemented - but haven't seen any.   A question is what is
needed to encourage the interactions.


        I think this is where things (start to) go wrong with the existing IETF 
model. We need drafts of everything is an axiom here that we should challenge. 
In open source, the code, its associated wiki pages and perhaps auto-gen docs 
are the draft and implementation agreement/documentation in question. 

        I would also challenge what has become the common new WG "formula" 
these days. That is the notion that requirements, problem statements or 
architectures are always needed and must come before the WG can work on any 
protocols/solutions. These are heavy burdens that have a price of slowing 
things down. If we want to pay that price, we'd better get something good in 
return. However, the road is littered with many examples of recent WGs getting 
nowhere after several years of work. These groups often end up in this state 
because frankly many of the people involved in those efforts are completely 
disconnected from the reality of building the things they are apparently 
designing. In many cases they never have built anything either, so much of the 
effort goes into explaining to them why things need to be a certain way/etc... 
Unfortunately their "veto" or influence in the process also dilutes the 
simplicity that an implementation would reveal (i.e.: useless options).  Its 
clearly the difference between theory and practice, which I think we all 
understand is a real thing.   The end result is that this impedance is one 
quantifiable reason why people have looked to over avenues such as open source, 
to build interoperable systems/tools/etc... quickly.   

        The solution: join the IETF process to the open source communities 
*where it makes sense, but not otherwise*. Open source BTW is what we used to 
call a rough-concensus + running code around here!
If we stick to interfaces that need "on the wire" interoperability, we are in 
the sweet spot. If we wade into areas where there is little value added - such 
as requirements/problem statements/architectures, lets not waste our time. For 
example, there are clearly cases where an RFC standard for something does not 
makes sense. Something like Open stack is a good example. The APIs are there, 
implemented in code you can see and documented. There is a well defined change 
process that identifies stable release points and also allows for quick 
iteration on that code/interfaces to evolve that works very quickly. Why would 
anyone every need an RFC for these things?  Now there really are cases where 
formal standardization makes sense. As I said if we stick to interfaces that 
need "on the wire" interop, we are squarely somewhere both open source and the 
IETF can add value. For example, there is a lot of code generation in open 
source based on yang models these days. Many of the experts around the model 
creation are at the IETF and not necessarily in those communities, so joining 
those folks to model creation can help that running code. In cases where 
vendors really want interop at the model level, then lets get together the 
vendors/operators that care, and not only build running code to test/prove 
those models make sense, but then run them through the IETF process in parallel.

        --Tom

[Alia] Diversity of implementation is important as is stability of a
standard and it being understood how to change/upgrade for different
versions.  These don't come automatically via open-source.

Regards,
Alia

signature.asc
Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail