IESG proposed statement on the IETF mission

Harald Tveit Alvestrand harald at alvestrand.no
Thu Oct 23 12:40:32 CEST 2003



--On 23. oktober 2003 09:51 -0400 Eric Rosen <erosen at cisco.com> wrote:

>
> 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.

True. But I don't want to close out the option of admitting that adopting 
TRADE, FORCES, OPES or SPEECHSC was a mistake, or that we shouldn't have 
kicked HTML work out of the IETF and into the World Wide Web Consortium, if 
that's what the community thinks.
All of these were debated at the time the decisions were made. It would be 
a surprise if we, using 20/20 hindsight, were to conclude that we did the 
right thing every time.

Note: If I was trying to change the IETF's mission to suit my own 
preferences, this discussion would be shorter. I'm trying to change the 
IETF's mission to suit the *IETF*'s preferences.

               Harald




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