Re: Alternative decision process in RTCWeb

[Harald Alvestrand <[e-mail]>]

On 11/29/2013 04:27 AM, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> On 29 Nov 2013, at 00:05, Cullen Jennings <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> As a quick cheat sheet to where browser vendors might stand on this matter...
> Thanks.
>
> In a similar vein, can anyone point out what we get if the IETF were to agree on a single MTI video codec for WebRTC?
> What is the upside to making this herculean effort?
>
>
The relevant section is section 2.3 of draft-ietf-rtcweb-overview.

2.3.  On interoperability and innovation

    The "Mission statement of the IETF" [RFC3935] states that "The
    benefit of a standard to the Internet is in interoperability - that
    multiple products implementing a standard are able to work together
    in order to deliver valuable functions to the Internet's users."

    Communication on the Internet frequently occurs in two phases:

    o  Two parties communicate, through some mechanism, what
       functionality they both are able to support

    o  They use that shared communicative functionality to communicate,
       or, failing to find anything in common, give up on communication.

    There are often many choices that can be made for communicative
    functionality; the history of the Internet is rife with the proposal,
    standardization, implementation, and success or failure of many types
    of options, in all sorts of protocols.

    The goal of having a mandatory to implement function set is to
    prevent negotiation failure, not to preempt or prevent negotiation.

    The presence of a mandatory to implement function set serves as a
    strong changer of the marketplace of deployment - in that it gives a
    guarantee that, as long as you conform to a specification, and the
    other party is willing to accept communication at the base level of
    that specification, you can communicate successfully.

    The alternative - that of having no mandatory to implement - does not
    mean that you cannot communicate, it merely means that in order to be
    part of the communications partnership, you have to implement the
    standard "and then some" - that "and then some" usually being called
    a profile of some sort; in the version most antithetical to the
    Internet ethos, that "and then some" consists of having to use a
    specific vendor's product only.