IETF Role other than as Standards Body

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On mandag, mars 24, 2003 12:01:22 -0500 "Bound, Jim" <Jim.Bound at hp.com> 
wrote:

> One of the subjects in the draft is what is the IETFs role.
>
> My bias is that it is a standards body.  It is not a deployment body and
> does not own how the Internet or networks are actually deployed, other
> than through standards that are used.
>
> Who we are and believe we are affects our process, technical review, and
> the IESG decision process.
>
> If we accept and state who we are out of this process it will help
> greatly.

We have a huge part of our collective minds wrapped around the standards 
process.
There are some of our activities, especially but not limited to the 
activities in the Ops area (for instance dnsops, bmwg, mboned, nasreq, 
ptomaine, v6ops, ieprep) tht take a slightly wider perspective on what it's 
proper to write documents for than is commonly done in a pure standards 
body.

When sloganeering (which I have occasionally done), I've used the phrase 
"The IETF is about making the Internet work".

>
> As example I know of several large in process deployments that use our
> specs but don't come to to use for choices of A, B, or C.  Those choices
> are often a business and economic decision and that the IETF has input
> too.

sometimes the IETF writes documents saying that "for environment X, C is a 
stupid idea". I think this is sometimes a valid thing to do.
but I don't think we have any business telling people they can't do what we 
recommend they don't - we're not in the mandatory standards business.

My thoughts.

                Harald