Re: bettering open source involvement

[Alia Atlas <[e-mail]>]

Hi Melinda & Michael,

On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 1:51 AM, MH Michael Hammer (5304) <[e-mail]>
wrote:

>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ietf [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Melinda Shore
> > Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2016 10:31 PM
> > To: Brian E Carpenter; Suzanne Woolf
> > Cc: IETF discussion list
> > Subject: Re: bettering open source involvement
> >
> > On 7/28/16 1:06 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> > > And there's our problem, right there. Protocols without APIs are
> > > pretty much useless these days. IPv6 without a socket API would have
> > > been an abject failure. Without RFC 2133, RFC 2292 and their
> > > successors, who knows how the POSIX and Winsock support for IPv6 would
> > > have turned out?
> >
> > Not specifying APIs in the IETF clearly doesn't mean that there are no
> APIs,
> > clearly.
> >
> > I'm certainly open to the possibility that we start tackling APIs but
> I'm not
> > sure it's a terrific idea.  For one thing, we already have too much
> work.  For
> > another, I'm not sure we'd produce particularly good APIs. It's a
> different skill
> > from developing and specifying network protocols.  And thirdly, I'm not
> > convinced that the people implementing our protocols would want IETF-
> > developed APIs.
> >
> > This is completely subjective but my own sense is that the
> > #1 problem we have related to open source projects we take years to
> > produce specifications.
> >
>
> This! +1000
>

That certainly aligns with what I've heard as well, but can I poke into a
bit more.
I know that, for instance, I can get a draft from written to the RFC Editor
in 6 weeks,
if it isn't controversial.   Most of that time is to allow adequate review
at the WG, IETF
Last Call, directorates and IESG levels.

My sense is that the rest of the time goes to the WG process which has
aspects of:
   a) Getting people interested in the idea
   b) Having folks cycle in and out of paying attention and commenting
   c) Having authors/editors be distracted and unresponsive.
   d) Having WG Chairs be distracted/unresponsive and want more discussion
first.
   e) Avoiding having actively hard discussions about contentious points.
   f) (sometimes) waiting for implementations to sanity-check

It feels like a WG group or topic in a fixed area with agreement could get
past many of these slow-downs - if there were general agreement and a
culture in that WG of doing so.

We aren't, after all, doomed to repeat the delays of the past :-)  which
isn't to say that this would be easy.

What do you think?  Are there factors that I'm missing?   Is there a
technical topic where there could be enthusiasm to push?

Regards,
Alia