Re: Alternative Proposal for Two-Stage IETF Standardization

[Dave CROCKER <[e-mail]>]

On 11/11/2010 11:14 AM, Russ Housley wrote:
>        (Full) Internet Standard:   The Internet community achieves rough
>           consensus -- on using the running code of a specification.
>
> This causes me pause, because it does not say that the RFC was sufficient
> to produce interoperable implementations.
>
> Perhaps this is a problem with the words that were selected, but it might
> be a fundamental concern.  I can't tell from the draft.  Please explain.


Russ,

Your diagnostic assessment is exactly right:  The precise wording needs to be 
better.

I -- since I'm the editor of the doc, I get wording blame -- took it as a given 
that "widespread use" required interoperability.  And I wish I could say that 
you were the first to notice the potential hole is our existing language.  (In 
fact, it took some iterations before I comprehended what problem was being seen 
in the language.)

Frankly, I think it's an edge condition, because the 'violation' would be having 
an IETF standards track specification that gained widespread use, but with only 
one implementation.

Or, at least, that's the hole in the language that has been noted to me.  If you 
see other problems, please explain.

To establish the base:  It is not possible to achieve widespread use on the 
Internet without having multiple components interacting.  That's called 
interoperability.

However, the interoperability might be among components that are clones of a 
single code base.

So our language needs to be enhanced to cover multiple implementations.  And as 
long as the language hood is up, we might as well put in a turbo-booster that 
asserts the higher octane 'interoperability' word.

Does that cover your concern?

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net