Re: [hrpc] new title for draft-tenoever-hrpc-political

[Tony Rutkowski <[e-mail]>]

Niels,

>    Standards enabling interoperating networks, what we think of today as
>    the Internet, were created as open, formal and voluntary standards.
>    A platform for internet standardisation, the Internet Engineering
>    Task Force (IETF), was created in 1992 to enable the continuation of
>    such standardisation work.  The IETF has sought to make the standards
>    process transparent (by ensuring everyone can access standards,
>    mailing-lists and meetings), predictable (by having clear procedures
>    and reviews) and of high quality (by having draft documents reviewed
>    by members from its own epistemic community).  This is all aimed at
>    increasing the accountability of the process and the quality of the
>    standard.
The 1992 mention in the second sentence above is somewhat at odds with
the history.  Indeed, there is no apparent significance to the year
1992.  The Wikipedia rendition of the history that includes the IETF
site, is a reasonably good approximation of the facts, and the official
version typically uses 1986 as the formation of what is referred to as
the IETF.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Engineering_Task_Force

The use of the term "formal" is also at odds with the official
descriptions of the activities.  Indeed, historically, the word "formal"
as it applies to internet standards is one that has been applied to the
legally structured standards bodies such as ITU-T, ISO, 3GPP, OASIS,
IEEE, ETSI, CA/B Forum, CableLabs, etc, etc.  Historically, the
principal quality which has made the IETF different within the rather
vast ecosystem of internet standards bodies is its informality without
legal existence - largely because of its DARPA origins.  Most formal
bodies have the qualities described in the paragraph, although some fail
on the freely available, public access front.

--tony

ps. In anyone is curious as to what the internet standards ecosystem
looked like in 1991, you might find the attached diagram edifying.  It
was done in conjunction with my inviting Vint to give a presentation on
policy panel at the first GSC that year which I chaired. :-)