Re: Affirmation of the Modern Global Standards Paradigm

[Hannes Tschofenig <[e-mail]>]

Hi John, 

On Aug 15, 2012, at 3:41 PM, John E Drake wrote:

> JD:  To what purpose?  As an aside, I get the 'feel-good' aspect, but is there anything more?

I like the term - IAB documents as 'feel-good' publications. 

The IAB publishes a variety of different documents. Some of them are formal communication interactions with other organizations and others are documenting topics that could be of interest to the IETF community or even beyond. These documents are not enforceable in a legal sense (which is good). 

The content of this specific document did not surprise you and, as a regular IETF participant, it shouldn't. You look at the list of principles and they sound familiar - they make sense (at least to most of us, as folks noted in this discussion thread). The 'Openness', for example, is in my view extremely important since it allows relevant stakeholders to participate: Think about how low the barrier is to participate in the IETF. If you believe that the process has any impact on the quality of the specifications then the principles listed in the document may resonate with you. 

Many may consider these principles as so obvious that they are not worthwhile to write down. Unfortunately, they are not as obvious as one might think. There are other ways to do standardization and, as we have seen in the discussions on this list, some would like to change the rules of the game. I believe that this will have negative consequences for the Internet eco-system and for the speed of innovation we had gotten so used to. 

Whether this document can prevent bad things from happening is of course a separate story but it, at least, captures the views of a list of organizations active in Internet standardization. 

I hope that this makes sense to you. 

Ciao
Hannes