Here is my two cents worth on the subject. As all of you know there are many oversight bodies. One of the great aspects and advantage of IETF is the free flow of ideas and the freedom it allows for implementations. There are methods already in place to change specifications. As the proverbial saying goes; "if someone invents a better mouse trap" they can submit a DRAFT RFC for consideration.
Another point to consider is while, oversight bodies start of with good intentions, it gets bogged in turf wars and internal fiefdoms over time. The same violators starts influencing the outcome, usually the big guys that are breaking or violating implementation specs today at the expense of the little guys. This will eventually kill the spirit and workings of IETF as we know today. Pall -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Camile Howe Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 4:39 AM To: George Michaelson; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: IAB/ISOC not IETF Charter Re: What is at stake? Re: IP: Microsoft breaks Mime specification Obviously standards non-conformance abuse by industry is "major concern" of IETF members, 'cause I haven't seen this type of "chat-discussion" email (over 100) since TCP. Would expect that it is an ISOC & IAB joint "internet management/oversight" decision as to how we implement industry conformance oversight. Believe most IETF members agree that there would be (industry) incentive to follow an "internet compliant" certification program. If implemented properly (& inexpensive enough for the little guys, perhaps $scaled to business size) would most definitely ease the quantity of offenders. IETF members will gladly assist in the process development of IETF Protocol standards compliance methodology. Below is one possible(high-level) method of implementation. Per the mass/chat-mail discussion... The IETF is not an oversight/management org of Internet. That is the IABs charter. Policing corporations' standards implementations surely is beyond our scope (& $..ha!). IETF is to engineer/develop standard protocols. It seems quite appropriate that our IETF chairman denounce any product known (proven by any IESG member) to deviate from an IETF standard, in the event that the deviation will/might impede the Internet's operation or performance. However, this is risky since in all probability will have a very negative effect... media and politics in the development of standards is bad business. Remember that is why we segregated domain naming. Publicity breads political intervention and inevitably limits innovative development. Believe this area should be the IAB's charter. Since most of us discover short-coming of products during our own employment endeavors, we should establish a new procedure that facilitates us to provide standard-offensive data (perhaps an impact rating scheme), by which the appropriate working group can independently validate and pass on to our chairman... better yet... the IAB (or even ISOC since it a profit/fee org). This would give our spokesman/representative what is required to make such a "damning" non-conforming statement. As far as certification of any standard. Again, it is not the IESG charter, however it is would be appropriate for the IAB to approve certain "test centers" to perform validation/certification endorsement on behalf of the IAB. Most large companies, Sun, MS, IBM etc have the same sort of program. The IAB then gets a percentage of what the "test center" makes. Could be the most cost-effective way to implement policing world-wide. The IAB could be our public voice as well. Camile PS A quote from the IAB... "Another fuzzy boundary is "how far up or down do we go?" With the international political drive for information superhighways, the IAB is expecting the Internet to become the infrastructure for the "Information Infrastructure." Does this mean that every information handling protocol must be developed by the IETF? Certainly not!" http://www.iab.org/connexions.html --- George Michaelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > We'll know when the Internet 'matters' on this > measure, when they > take the management and oversight away from the > IETF. > ... Hrm, SoUL = Software Underwriters Laboratories but I thought the UL was a distinct company in it self that other companies send stuff to for testing. So some one withe means and clout in the industy needs to take it up. Suppose could put of a website like http://www.underwriters.org... hrm www.sul.org and gear it as a contact point for software testing. At 10:08 AM 1/23/02 -0600, Alex Audu wrote: >Great idea, but you also should not leave out the issue of compliance testing. >May be an organization like >the Underwriters Laboratories,..or some other newly formed group >(opportunity,.. anyone?) could take >up the role of compliance testing. > >Regards, >Alex. > > >Franck Martin wrote: > >> I support the idea, what needs to be done is the IETF to come with a >> trademark and someone to Inform the ISOC about all this discussion and also >> to register this trademark... >> >> Lynn, Could you please read this thread from the IETF archives, it could be >> interesting for the development of ISOC/IETF. >> >> Franck Martin >> Network and Database Development Officer >> SOPAC South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission >> Fiji >> E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Kyle Lussier [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] >> Sent: Wednesday, 23 January 2002 4:04 >> To: Donald E. Eastlake 3rd; [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: IP: Microsoft breaks Mime specification >> >> We need stronger enforcement of the RFC's, and we need creative >> thinking as to how to go about that. I like the idea of an easy >> in "IETF Certified" trademark, if you abuse it, it can be revoked, >> and then vendors building contracts around supporting IETF Certified >> products. >> >> It gives CIOs something to rattle about as well. I.e., they >> can require IETF Certification of products, which guarantees them >> standards support, as enforced by the IETF community. >> >> Just a simple precise trademark construct, with an "easy-in" >> application that costs maybe $100 per product, and supported >> by the IETF. That certification could be revoked down the road. >> >> IETF doesn't have to be a conformance body or litigator. It just >> merely needs to be the bearer of the "one true mark" :). >> >> Kyle Lussier >> AutoNOC LLC > > ---------------- ... > > keith - may i refer you to don eastlake's earlier reply? viz., the existing > system is quite effective because products that don't play by the concensus > rules have a much harder time thriving or even surviving. sometimes this works. as a generalization, it doesn't hold up. > > Just to pick a small example: MIME has been out for nearly 10 years and > > I'm still receiving, on a daily basis, MIME attachments that are > > unreadable because they lack proper content-type labelling. > > That's not what I would call "effective". > > then ignore it or fix it. obviously, the pain isn't at the point where it > bothers you... for myself, the program that handles my incoming mail dumps > MIME-bad stuff into an audit file and then ignores it. if it was > "important", then whoever sent it can get on the phone... in doing this for > the last 10 years, i've yet to suffer a mishap because of this... that kind of solution is easy for you or me. unfortunately, it doesn't scale to a user base of 100s of millions of people that's trying to use email to ship around attachments and wondering why they don't work. ... Keith ...One common way for an idea to be half-baked is for it to utterly fail to consider the needs of some constituency or another. As the Internet has become larger and more diverse our organization has also become fragmented, its participants representing very diverse interests. Probably for this reason it's become fairly common for working groups to produce results that are half-baked in this way. Throwing such half-baked ideas to the marketplace usually hasn't resulted in refinement, but it has resulted in harm to the Internet's ability to support new applications. And by the time the harm is understood, it's way too late to kill the bad idea. As for making non-conformance public, I would very much like to see that happen. Whether IETF is in a good position to do this is a different question. Since (perhaps unfortunately) most of IETF's energy comes from vendors who pay their employees to work within IETF working groups, and some of those same vendors have reputations for producing dangerously non-conformant implementations, I think it puts IETF in a precarious position if it starts pointing fingers at the vendors who produce such things Keith __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Great stuff seeking new owners in Yahoo! Auctions! http://auctions.yahoo.com
