IESG proposed statement on the IETF mission

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

since both you and Scott pointed out this one....

--On 15. oktober 2003 12:48 -0400 Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu> wrote:

>>    "The purpose of the IETF is to create high quality, relevant,
>>     and timely standards for the Internet."
>
> I actually believe IETF has a somewhat wider purpose than that.  What
> I usually say is "we're trying to help the Internet work better".

my personal belief is that the purpose of the *Internet technical 
community* is to make the Internet work better. But we have to admit to 
division of labor, and the part that we call the IETF needs to concentrate 
on standards, and the "supporting functions" of fora for experimentation 
and gathering of operational experience.

Others do the work of pulling fiber, designing routers, arresting spammers 
and detecting virii. We, gathered as the IETF, should not (IMHO) attempt to 
take over those functions. Despite the fact that it's what many of us do 
when we're not doing IETF stuff!

                Harald