The IETF's problems

[Iljitsch van Beijnum]

On woensdag, jul 23, 2003, at 00:17 Europe/Amsterdam, Keith Moore wrote:

>> What I don't get is why the IESG should be involved in managing the
>> wgs in the first place.

> because, left to themselves, WGs will happily create things that
> don't satisfy various requirements (such as security), or which
> interfere with other parties' interests (like zeroconf or nat WGs
> trying to fundamentally change the way IP works), and then the WGs will
> get very annoyed when they only learn *after* they think they're done
> why IESG (for quite valid reasons) refuses to approve their documents
> and their work isn't even fixable.

I don't think the annoyance can be avoided in cases like this. All this 
work just to move the moment when this happens around doesn't seem like 
a very effective use of time and energy.

And does the current way of doing this really work?

And what's the problem with zeroconf anyway?

> what I don't get is why anyone could think that WGs should be allowed 
> to
> make standards without some broad-based oversight.

The current way of doing this doesn't work very well. If someone can 
come up with something better, that would be great. If not... then we 
need to be more radical.