At 8:10 AM 12/14/94, solo(_at_)bbn(_dot_)com wrote:
I disagree with this statement. I think a general solution for
signature handling of objects/messages must allow a user to
Dave, the tenor of your notes seems pretty consistent in the desire for a
highly general mechanism. From a philosophical standpoint, this is
laudable.
Unfortunately, a specification that adequately satisfies your desire
doesn't seem to be available now. As with any product development effort,
there is a small matter of market window. That is, products are useless
until they are shipped. Most products are painfully limited in their
abilities. It's always a wonder that they ever are seen as useful. But
they are.
The current round of specs attempts to provide some highly useful
functionality. It well may be that there is more that they can't do than
they can. Nevertheless, after several years of development, the specs on
the table are what we have. I suggest that it would quite simply not be
responsible of us to delay matters further.
If the specs fail to permit the functions they promise, please delineate
the technical errors. If you have a superior specification to proffer,
please do.
But it simply can't be reasonable to the community for the work to continue
to languish further 'in committee'. A very consistent mark of success in
IETF work -- quite distinguished from work in most other standards bodies
-- is that attention is paid to timeliness. This results in specifications
that are quite often highly limited, but nonetheless useful. From such
initial efforts come initial deployment. From that experience comes
iteration on the spec.
To date, we lack the deployment. Please let's ship this thing and start
getting some Internet-wide experience.
Please.
d/
--------------------
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg Consulting +1 408 246 8253
675 Spruce Dr. fax: +1 408 249 6205
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
dcrocker(_at_)mordor(_dot_)stanford(_dot_)edu