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Re: Observations on (non-technical) changes affecting IETF operations

2016-03-19 14:46:59
On 3/6/2016 8:26 PM, Melinda Shore wrote:
 If we're going to let
the market decide there's inevitably going to be some waste,
but we really have put a pile of time and effort into standardizing
things that have never seen any uptake and almost certainly
never will.  That doesn't bother me that much, but what does
bother me about it is that that's one of the reasons we're slow.


I'll suggest that that's not the reason we're slow. Rather, there are two other reasons:

1. When we start an effort, we do not press for demonstrated community need -- but more importantly, demonstrated community interest in /using/ the output. So the folk who work on a topic tend to have no sense of urgency. (Even when there is a claimed sense of urgency, such as for STIR, the work often is not pursued in a fashion that matches the claim, with an eye towards rapid development and deployment.)

2. The folk making IETF approvals feel an unfortunate fear of letting flawed specifications through the process, even though the fear does not produce obviously superior results. So we impose high barriers to entry and high barriers to completion.



d/
--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net