Re: Mission statement [Re: Last Call: <draft-hoffman-tao4677bis-15.txt> (The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force) to Informational RFC]

[Scott Brim <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 2:31 AM, Brian E Carpenter
<[e-mail]> wrote:
> On 2012-05-31 07:22, Eliot Lear wrote:
>
> ...
>>   * I've been told by some that the Mission of the IETF is in some way
>>     out of date.  I don't know whether this is true,
>
> That sound like somebody's personal opinion, but it is still a BCP
> and therefore still represents IETF consensus.
>
>>     but if it is, the
>>     reference should be removed.
>
> I don't think so.

I just want to support the sense of this message.  The mission
statement is one of the few things that anchors and orients the work
of the IETF -- and personally I like it.  If people think it's out of
date, let them say explicitly why (they can still do so anonymously)
so we can have a real discussion.  I don't want to have doubt cast on
the mission statement, and have our leadership feel a need to
reconsider it, because someone somewhere might have said something
general about not liking it.  And in any case as long as we have a
mission statement the Tao should refer to it.

Scott