Hi IETFers,
Firstly, IETF standards need to be more available to community through
open sources, specially the security standards to help the community
to avoid attacks from big organisations. I suggest that a new IETF
Area to be open for Open Source. We need to make comments on all our
standards that are not available open sources. In IETF it is still not
clear its standards implementation practices in the community, we need
informational documents that decsribe its standards' tests and
possible scenario failures.
Secondly, the industry is running codes (closed source) of our
standards but no much feedback about their performance in IETF. The
IETF should get more input from open source communities that can help
to make IETF more driven by user-engineers than industries.
Thirdly, both people and organisations, that volunteer their running
codes into the new IETF area will help to build a better Internet
future. If we get open source volunteers into IETF with their
input/code/documents, then we will get better performance in our
standards and in the future directions.
Comments below,
On 4/14/14, 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.
I recommend to separate between designers and implementers. Each have
different challenges and different tasks, so I suggest different
WGs/DTs or a new IETF Area. The way IETF was doing in the past is
excellent process because we have designers interactions, but we need
more volunteer implementers and we may need implementers to have more
interaction within IETF.
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).
Thanks, it is an important draft for the IETF General Area to
consider. I suggested before that the IETF general Area should have
some WGs for important issues because the area is not performing well,
and many issues are not getting good conclusions by the community.
IESG will like to leave every thing general for only its input and we
as community have no input only if IESG decides. However, if we do
like you and write our own draft it may get attention from existing
participants, but who left IETF like Vidya Narayanan or may be many
others (who unsubscribed from IETF list) will not get chance to say
their opinion because there was no convincing community system for
general works in IETF General Area.
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.
I agree with you, but IMO the way of doing that needs to be within
IETF organisation not outside IETF. Those open source community should
be welcomed to join WGs within one new IETF Area. Maybe there are
problems within IETF management with those communities management,
which may delay movements.
[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.
The IETF should be running its running code, some of community are
sending messages to WG asking of code sources but they may get no
respond, isn't that a shame of IETF to have no clue what to respond or
to have no document related to running code tests. The IETF runs the
standards for the community, so I expect the IETF to help community to
participate in its standards by making an IETF area available for
community to run the IETF standards.
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.
Yes, but after the IETF standard is published don't we think we need
to implement publicly (i.e. openly) that so the IETF vision is
targeted to make the Internet better place for users or community.
Does IETF leave the industry to manage/influence the change of
technology?
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.
Mostly industries don't do volunteering open source only for specific
reasons, but people may do volunteering open sources just to fulfill
the IETF vision.
[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.
IETF General Area still did not solve the diversity problem overall,
but for implementation diversity, IMO, we need a new IETF area that is
responsible to manage IETF open sources of its running code in the
community.
Best Wishes,
AB