Subject: Re: [homenet] Reducing IETF scope in response to market forces

From: Dave Taht <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 May 2019 19:31:17 +0200

On Sun, May 12, 2019 at 3:34 PM Stephen Farrell
<[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>
> Hiya,
>
> (With homenet co-chair hat on...)
>
> On 12/05/2019 07:33, Dave Taht wrote:
> >  To avoid howling
> > here I'll skip mentioning the dozens I have on my list, and just pick
> > on one that I was present at the founding of, homenet.
> >
> > Market forces have completely shifted out from under that working
> > group. No serious vendor
> > support ever appeared. The vendors most affected, never showed up.
> > Specs exist, but code doesn't. There was a very good preso on all this
> > at homenet 104.
>
> Yes, homenet WG participants have handled these issues
> explicitly and (I think) very well, so describing this
> one a zombie would be incorrect. Rather, it's a WG whose
> participants are trying to address and not ignore the
> issue of how relevant the planned work continues to be.

I knew that no matter whose ox I chose to gore with any example,
someone would rise to defend it.

> > The members of that working group hummed
> > overwhelmingly to recharter at ietf 104.
>
> The people in the room hummed that way yes. My co-chair
> recently started the discussion on the list to try to
> confirm or refute that conclusion. (Personally I think
> hums like that are likely to be a bit too positive for
> "do something" so I figure this needs more than just
> not disagreeing with that hum on the list.)

After my discussions with the participants afterwards, I have decided
to change my hum to "shift the dns-sd work to some other group, and
disband".

> It'd be great if interested folks got involved in the
> discussion on the homenet list.

And publicity (good or bad), is generally helpful in attracting
interest to problems. So here's some. :)

but: IMHO it's not further discussion that's needed, in homenet.
There's too many specs needing source code.

Until some government(s), some corporation(s), some foundation(s),
some billionaire(s), banks, insurance agencies, etc, step up to
provide the millions of dollars, required, of  many man-years  of
solid, dedicated, engineering time, integration, and QA, AND somehow
get the home router makers and software developers all on the same
page, homenet's goals cannot be achieved. And there are other things
along the edge of the Net that should gain priority.

This past christmas... I'd set aside some time to test the new
babel-hmac extensions, but got sucked into helping solve a serious
security bug affecting all MIPS devices (including many home routers),
instead. ( https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2019-January/015528.html
 )

I lost last year's christmas vacation to spectre/meltdown (and then some).

"Increasingly, as the world of pervasive networks and ubiquitous
computing hackers imagined decades ago has become reality, we’re not
just the innovators who thought of it first. Now we’re responsible;
having created the future, we have to maintain it. And, as the sinews
of civilization become ever more dependent on the Internet and
software-intensive communications devices, that responsibility gets
more serious every year." - - "Holding up the sky" -
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4196

>
> On the general points: I'd be for reducing the number
> of WGs that have formal sessions at IETF f2f meetings.
> I'm not fussed about the overall number of WGs that
> appear to exist - I'm fine if the IESG handle that
> however they want. I'd not be in favour of reducing
> the scope of the IETF in terms of the breadth of topics
> that are considered in-scope.

That is not the qualifier I use above. I essentially said if market
forces didn't align (after a while) there is no point in continuing.

>
> Cheers,
> S.
>
>
> > After that, however, several
> > core members of the group expressed to me that it would be best to
> > shutter it entirely and attempt to move the core to an org that was
> > actually focused on running code, more than further specifications and
> > further wading through ietf processes, and thus, meet elsewhere,
> > entirely.

Hackathons are not enough.

Anyway, as the last major ietf thing I cared about finishing
(babel-hmac) is complete, and, of the new things we laid out in ietf
104, I'm *absolutely*, 100%, never, no way, not, never, ever, going to
be involved with at a standards level (at which I think more than a
few will heave a sigh in relief!), I think it is time I quit the ietf,
entirely. I don't think I'll ever manage to communicate the
horrifically vast gaps in priorities, approaches, and problems that I
think that the ietf and internet have, here, or affect any change.
Continuing to try is futile, and dealing with the mailing list
traffic, wasteful of our time and my emotive energy. I'm much better
off focusing on what I do best.

I've played a LOT of guitar with various bands in the last months, so
I'll leave you with a song from ietf 104:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTPJO-cAAjQ&t=6m24s

So long and thanks for all the fish.

--

Dave Täht
CTO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-831-205-9740