Discussion of scope for IETF work 20
The problem with this item is that it assumes that the IETF will work on
this issue.
Given the problems of working in the IETF it is a far from foregone
conclusion that the players who can promote deployment would wish to
participate in an IETF WG.
The basic problem with the IETF is that the rules are from a pre-Internet
age. Despite propaganda almost nothing happens in most IETF WGs between
meetings. Then you get a last minute flury of activity. The practical upshot
of this is that there are effectively only 3 iterations of the drafts per
year. In OASIS or W3C where the norm is bi-weekly telcon calls the norm is
15 to 20 itterations of the draft per year.
The result is that it takes about 12 months to get a specification through
OASIS process, about 15 to get it through W3C and 4-5 years to get anything
through the IETF.
After the Working Group has approved a draft it can still take another 12-24
months to complete the IESG level of review. Despite the claim that the
proceedings are 'open and inclusive' there is a strange array of
'Directorates' which are unelected and unaccountable groups of insiders who
sometimes get to review specifications in secret.
Also although it is officially 'working group consensus' that decides when a
draft is ready it is in effect the chair who is the only person with a say.
This is not a problem if you have a chair who is reasonable. An unreasonable
chair can effectively do anything he likes - including holding repeated
'last calls' until he gets the result he wants or if that fails simply
override a 19-2 vote by the WG which has happened to me.
Finally we get to the stage which if there is any point to the IETF
structure you would think it would come first, the IESG. Basically this
committee of area directors is so over-worked that their decisions can take
years. If they do raise a good point the code has usually been out of the
gate several years by the time it is raised. So what tends to happen is a
pretty unproductive nit-picking of the document text.
This would not matter much if the imprimatur of the greybeards helped
deployment. I have never once seen that happen in any of the groups I have
been involved in. HTTP was successful long before the IETF group formed. In
fact at first the main problem was the insistence of certain greybeards that
the HTTP team admit that their scheme was completely wrong and that the
gopher folk had been right all along.
The issues that really matter as far as taking SPF forward are confidence in
the Intellectual Property regime (so far as is possible) and a working group
process that encourages rapid and accurate progress.
I don't think that it would be a good thing if we end up with the world
waiting for an IETF group to arrive at a composite of SPF, DMP, RMX etc. In
fact I am certain that the world will not wait, they will deploy.
Phill
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