IESG proposed statement on the IETF mission

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On 21. oktober 2003 15:31 -0400 Michael Richardson 
<mcr at sandelman.ottawa.on.ca> wrote:

>     Harald> Why an IETF standard, and not a Traffic Light Controllers
> Forum     Harald> standard?
>
>   a) Fora tend to include only people who pay to join them, and not the
>      general public, or things like LEAs, or pedestrian and cycling
>      organizations (which in this case, might care)

That's an issue with the form of the forum. I think the Global Grid Forum 
has taken a number of ideas from the IETF in how they do their work, for 
instance. And the interests of pedestrian organizations aren't very well 
served by the current IETF constituency, for that matter....
>
>   b) I'm not actually sure the answer to the above question for any of the
>      things currently in Applications, and even some of things in
> Transport.      Having said that, I'm not sure that they shouldn't be
> there.

I don't think that it's necessary for the IETF mission to be consistent 
with every decision we've taken in the past. And some things (like LDAP) 
didn't turn out the way we thought they would five or ten years back - the 
global directory is as dead as the global PKI at the moment.