IESG proposed statement on the IETF mission

Eric Rosen erosen at cisco.com
Thu Oct 23 10:51:23 CEST 2003


Harald> I  don't  think that  it's  necessary for  the  IETF  mission to  be
Harald> consistent with every decision we've taken in the past. 

If your "mission statement" is  inconsistent with MANY of the decisions that
have been taken  in the past, then  you should admit that you  are trying to
change the IETF's  mission to suit your own  preferences, rather than trying
to codify any existing practice. 

If we're  not trying for any  consistency, then I would  raise the following
questions: 

1. Why should the  IETF work on BGP?  Can't that be  done by a consortium of
   vendors and ISPs separate from the IETF?  

2. Why should the  IETF work on DNS?  Can't that be  done by a consortium of
   vendors and ISPs separate from the IETF? 

3. Why should  the IETF exist at  all?  Surely anything it does  can be done
   somewhere else by some other group.

We  should  either  aim  for  consistency  with  the  past,  or  else  do  a
"zero-based" mission statement in which everything is up for grabs and there
are no sacred cows. 




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