Time required to write down "wisdom" (Re: "Adult supervision")

[Keith Moore]

> p.s. I don't know who is playing the part of Keith Moore on this
> mailing list, but the Keith Moore I know is listed as the author of
> RFC 3205/BCP56,"On the use of HTTP as a Substrate", exactly the type
> of document that we're saying is too laborious for sitting ADs to
> produce. It's an excellent document. I am now officially confused.

Thanks.  As you might have surmised, I'm speaking from experience when I
say it's difficult to get those documents published as RFCs.

The first draft of that document was written on 5 August 1998.  It
wasn't published until February 2002, which was far too late to
influence the groups for which it was originally intended to provide
advice (though of course they did have access to the I-D).  The
document generated a lot of controversy and strong reaction, both
inside and outside of IETF, and significant resources were required to
respond to the objections.  Part of the controversy was from parties who
simply didn't want to be told how to use HTTP ("we'll do whatever we
want over port 80 because that's what we need to circumvent
firewalls, and furthermore we insist on being able to implement our
protocol using libraries that were written to facilitate retrieval
of web pages").   Part of it was due to strong philosophical
differences between those who saw HTTP as an application, and those who
saw it as a general means of providing access to arbitrary resources, as
in web services or SOAP.  Even so the final wording of the document was
(IIRC) fairly close to the original. It just took LOTS of time to
understand where the differences came from and to identify the minor
wording changes necessary to address those people's concerns.

The document also got stuck in limbo for months at a time, when it was
unclear who had the ball for the document or whether a particular set of
concerns had been addressed to that party's satisfaction.  (there was a
bit of discussion on w3c's TAG list for instance, which I didn't become
aware of for some time, and I ended up joining that list for awhile so
that I could explain why the document said the things that it did.  even
then, it was hard to know whether the concerns had been addressed.)

Keith