[Mike Dahlin: Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 05:55:09PM -0600]
> I think the main thing we must do to encourage group activity is give
I've grown weary of the complaints about why there isn't more
input/review/activity. It's clear as day to me. As someone who tried
to be very involved for a long time, for whom now even just reading
webi is a low priority, I'll show you my point of view.
I think if webi begins useful protocol work with an expectation that
the work would be accepted you would seen engineering input in droves.
To this point webi has pursued topics that many perceive as busywork -
known problems, taxonomies, and now requirements documents. Even one
requirement gathering process (IDD) that was getting decent list
interest was summarily shutdown in favor of RUP requirements - which
has had interest only from a few parties.
I, for one, diligently pounded away on all of them as pre-requisites
until I realized that there was never any intention of allowing me to
solve the problem that brought me here in the first place: "I have an
HTTP client that would love to take advantage of enhancing services
intermediaries might offer. How do I find out what/who is offering?"
or even a watered down version of the same: "I'd like to stop
hijacking traffic with L4/7 switches. My clients would use the damn
intermediary if I could just find out about it without configs on each
client."
I'll speak the obvious but unspoken truth: there are elements of the
IESG that don't care for the whole content networking space. It's not
pure end-to-end and for that some will disparage it. For some, this is
an honest technical disagreement, others are just ideological
kooks. (and yes, historically speaking I think the IESG has had a few
kooks - probably less than are in the general population, and probably
even less than are in other leadership bodies, but they certainly
haven't been kook-free.) In either case they aren't willing to let
standards be written and the marketplace decide what makes sense.. and
thus interoperability (which should be the first goal of the IETF)
isn't pushed forward.
A chair/responsible AD (I forget which) of this wg's precursor (wrec),
Keith Moore, said as much on the main IETF list in June - the context
is in a discussion about OPES getting chartered.
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf/Current/msg12483.html
Message-Id: <200106252006.QAA00396@astro.cs.utk.edu>
"in my experience, one reason that a WG is chartered to do only a
requirements document (there are others *) is that the WG appears to
lack basic competence, but there isn't the political will to entirely
block creation of the group."
[..]
"* another reason is that the group's work needs to satisfy such a
diverse set of interests that the only way to get everyone on the
same page is for the group to jointly write such a document."
and so given that cdi and opes have gone on great quests to get
chartered, and given the phenomenally limited scope of webi one is
left with the conclusion that under current leadership this work is not
welcome in the IETF. Any work we are chartered to do is really just
there to waste or time or to make us see it some other way. This isn't
the bottom-up development style pitched in the press releases "the
real work is done by dozens of working groups blah blah blah..:
and that's a real shame. Because this is about interoperability, which
we don't have, but that clearly isn't the first goal of the IETF at
this time.
So lots of people will get frustrated and leave - which is the whole
point of setting up the group this way anyhow. Or they'll wait for
signs that expending their effort will be appreciated and accepted
because the climate at the IESG level has shifted.
The folks that muddle through this area during this time deserve our
praise and appreciation (and I heartily extend mine to Ian, Mark N,
Mark D, Dan, Mike, Michael, Gary, et al..): but don't expect many like
them.
all that being said, it looks like there might actually be hope for
RUP and I'm encouraged.
-P
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Nov 18 2004 - 11:23:00 MST