RE: Facts, please, not handwaving [Re: Its about mandate RE: Why cant the IETF embrace an open Election Process]

> From: Brian E Carpenter [mailto:brc@zurich.ibm.com] 

> Phill,
> 
> > As a result the IETF is a standards body with 2000 active 
> participants 
> > that produces on average less than 3 standards a year and 
> typically takes ten years to produce even a specification.
> 
> It is well understood that the Internet mainly runs on 
> Proposed Standards, so the appropriate metric is how many 
> Proposed Standards the IETF produces a year. I think you will 
> find that is more than three.

The IETF calls itself a standards body, not a proposed standards body. 

The written process is very clearly not being followed but attempts to change it fall victim to inertia because nobody has a mandate to make changes.

> We are certainly slower than we should be, but I think you 
> will find that the typical time from a 00 draft to a Proposed 
> Standard is significantly less than ten years.
> 
> Let's see - HTTP/1.1 was published as Proposed Standard in 
> January 1997, and draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-00.txt was posted 
> in November 1995.

The first drafts of the spec were submitted in 1992/93 as you know. 

It still isn't recognized as an IETF standard.

We could argue this interminably or you could simply grasp the nettle and align theory with reality. For example declare that henceforth all draft standards will become full standards six months after becoming RFCs.

How the reconcilliation takes place really does not matter. We have a two stage process but for some reason we won't admit it. 

We could do another round of newtrack but that will take another three years and there is no reason to think it won't end up the same way.

Campaigns can be a pain, but they do have positive attributes. People who have to campaign for a position are forced to think about the contribution they intend to make, they have to set out a program of action, they have to communicate it to the electorate.  

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf@ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf