The IETF's problems

[todd glassey]

Melinda,

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Melinda Shore" <mshore at cisco.com>
To: "Iljitsch van Beijnum" <iljitsch at muada.com>
Cc: <problem-statement at alvestrand.no>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2003 10:28 AM
Subject: Re: The IETF's problems


> > This is a prime example of the topic of this list: the IETF is unable
> > to determine what it should work on and what it shouldn't work on in a
> > satisfactory way.
>
> The discussion itself isn't doing much to distill the topic
> down to document text, and we need to stay focused.  Do you
> feel that existing text regarding scope in the problem
> statement document is inadequate?

the cause(s) of the problem here is that the IETF is not an entity that has
a brain nor an opinion. It is by its charter and definition, an "Open and
Fair" standards process... and as such the IETF provides a platform for
moving those initiatives submitted within it to satisfaction of a preset
series of goals or milestones.

It, the IETF then is an organization and one by pure definition that gets no
opinion on anything, except as to whether the cafeteria style checklist
items for any given initiative are completed and nothing more. This is the
key failing of the IETF in that WG Chairs have used it to set what they will
and wont work on and this has caused probably billions of dollars in damages
to companies that tried to work with the IETF and were shutdown.

As to whether this phenomenum is real or not, I personally lost about 4M in
equity in Coastek primarily from what the VC's told us becuase PKIX refused
to hear another timestamping protocol back when the original one was
proposed in 1997.

Todd Glassey

>
> Thanks,
>
> Melinda