Subject: [ietf-outcomes] "+>" ?

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:01:31 -0800

Folks,

Dave Harrington just made an interesting change to the SNMPv3 entry(*) that I'd 
like to get some comments on:

    <http://trac.tools.ietf.org/misc/outcomes/wiki/IetfOperations>

The change specifies an Adoption value of "+>".  That's one + and not two, so 
it's not in the current Legend.

In formulating the original list of Adoption values, I had assumed that 
prompting "extensive derivative work" was an additional /degree/ of success, not 
a different /kind/.  So it did not occur to me that something could have "some 
adoption" and also prompt derivative work.

It well may be that David has correctly implied that derivative work is really a 
measure that is independent of "success".  (And this might satisfy an opinion 
Jon Callas expressed to me that a 'failed' effort can nonetheless be extremely 
valuable for learning how to do later work better.  So I suppose that "-->" 
would be a reasonable value for PEM...?)

It might also be that the definition of + vs. ++ need changing.  The more I'm 
thinking about David's change, the more I think this is the case.

The problem is my original choice of wording in the Legend.  "massive adoption" 
seems to imply getting a large percentage of a large market, and that's not 
really what I had meant for that value.  Since the Target Adoption column, and 
some accompanying text, cite the potential for becoming a critical resource, but 
within a smaller market -- and that that would be a major success -- the current 
Adoption definition for ++ might be off the mark.

This suggests that the definitions in the Legend should be changed to be 
something like:

    +:  gained some usefulness

    +:  became an essential capability

(The use of past tense is to avoid any implication about current utility, since 
the wiki is not trying to track the later reduction in usefulness over time, but 
rather whether a capability has /ever/ become useful.)

And my meanderings that cite PEM, above, are causing me to think that ">" should 
be defined as separately applicable, to any level of utility assessment, 
including --.

Thoughts?

d/

(*)  David has been a busy guy this week, tweaking entries in the wiki.  Thanks, 
David!

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

---

From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:04:16 -0700

On 2/11/10 2:01 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote:

> prompting "extensive derivative work" was an additional /degree/ of
> success, not a different /kind/.  So it did not occur to me that
> something could have "some adoption" and also prompt derivative work.

I was quite tempted to do +> for XMPP (there are hundreds of extensions
beyond the core use cases), but I figured I'd let someone else try it
first. However, given that Facebook just enabled XMPP support (add 400m
users to existing guesstimates), perhaps ++ is in order. :)

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:13:23 -0800

> users to existing guesstimates), perhaps ++ is in order. :)

Two independent assessments that +> is useful is a strong indication that it's a 
good idea.

So, I'll go ahead and change the Legend according to the details I suggested in 
my previous note.

Reminder: This is all easily reversed, if folks object.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker