Subject: RE: Microsoft and multi-valued RDNs (was: draft minutes)

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 12:41:37 -0700

> Bill Joy (why is it always people named "Bill" who cause these 
> problems?) decided that the cost of computing the TCP checksum was 
> high and resulted in diminished throughout, and besides, in the 
> typical Ethernet LAN context, the CRC caught errors anyway. So, for a 
> while BSD didn't bother computing the checksum, at least if it could 
> detect that the peer implementation was another BSD system. DARPA, 
> who was funding this work, had to bring significant pressure to bear, 
> to quash this behavior.

I would just like to observe that at this point DARPA does not have the
ability to bring significant pressure to bear, nor for that matter does the
IESG.

The fundamental problem of the IETF is that it continues to act as if it was
in a position to act in a unilateral and unaccountable fashion and have
DARPA or the market enforce its decisions when in fact those days are long
gone.

I do not have a particular problem with the way Stephen is chairing this
group.  I do however have a big problem with the IETF generally and the
chair's prerogatives which Stephen is arguing for. 

Stephen is entirely right about the way that the IETF works, according to
the rules the chair can behave in any damn way he wants. The chair is
completely free to ignore the decisions of the group and impose his own.
That is exactly what happened in the case of DNSEXT. There is no question
that the IETF can continue to run itself on the 'magic circle' principle if
it chooses.

The corollary is that the industry can decide to go its own way and ignore
the work product of this group in particular and the IETF in general. The
magic circle principle fails if it excludes the major stakeholders. At this
point there is only one major vendor which is still engaged in IETF in a
meaningful way.

Complain about industry not implementing standards if you will. But why do
you expect people to implement specifications when they are excluded from
the decision making process?

My problem with the IETF is that it is completely ineffective in building
consensus amongst the stakeholders. Taking a proposal to the IETF will not
get buy in from my business partners or my competitors. All it will achieve
is a delay of two to three years in which the exact status of the proposal
will be uncertain. 

My strong recommendation is to simply approve all existing drafts in their
current state and close. Whether the drafts are correct or not is irrelevant
at this point as is the question of whether they do or do not describe real
world practice. 

And before Stephen gets too upset here, I am referring to the IETF as a
whole and not just the PKIX group.

		Phill

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 15:21:08 -0700

Phillip -
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
To: "'Stephen Kent'" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 12:41 PM
Subject: RE: Microsoft and multi-valued RDNs (was: draft minutes)

> ability to bring significant pressure to bear, nor for that matter does
the

Maybe not but the Homeland Defense folks do as does the DoJ...

> DARPA or the market enforce its decisions when in fact those days are long

When DARPA or NSF ran the "net" there was no amount of commerce on it worth
commenting over...

> group.

lets not go there.

> I do however have a big problem with the IETF generally and the

I Support this as the core problem with the IESG's so called "standards
process" - it and the IETF is essentially a Guild and not anything like
"accountable for what it does" and that is the key issue here.