Subject: RE: Time required to write down "wisdom" (Re: "Adult supervision")

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 09:21:59 +0300

Hi Keith,

> > > You can't rush a document (if you want it to be good). 
> Indeed, when I
> > > write documents, I personally find that if I reread 
> something I wrote
> > > a month earlier, I often find obvious things that need 
> fixing. I often
> > > don't see these if I review the document a few days after 
> last working
> > > on it. The point here is that good documents just don't 
> happen on the
> > > first version and time is needed to properly review and iterate.
> > 
> > Well, sometimes good may even be too much, if it results in a document
> > coming out much later than the market needs.  'Good Enough' is, quite
> > often, sufficient. 
> 
> If the market needs something that screws the users, then it's not Good
> Enough.  IETF does not exist to bless whatever the market wants, 
> and especially not to bless whatever marketers think the market wants.
> We MUST NOT let presumptions about market criteria compel us to accept
> technically shoddy work.

Without a doubt, you are correct.  What I meant more is that if we are
working on a technically valid topic, it helps to get that work completed
in a reasonable time, so that other groups or companies don't create
alternatives which may be less sound.  

John

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 08:26:15 -0400

> alternatives which may be less sound.  

agreed.  though we probably need to realize that there are cases in which
there is no way to produce a technically sound standard before the market
deploys an inferior solution.

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 08:01:46 -0500

I think the Problem Statement implication here is that there are two
possible cases:

- a company tries to slam-dunk its protocol into products before we can
complete a specification for it, and

- we take so long completing a specification that protocols start appearing
in products before we're finished with our solution

We can't prevent the first case from happening, and companies that attempt
this may succeed from time to time.

We can't prevent the second case from happening, in all situations but every
improvement we can make in "removing avoidable delays" will help.

We want to reward people for bringing technology to us, by producing quality
specifications in a timely manner.

When we are, once again, recognized as a body that can develop
specifications quickly, this will encourage customers to say "but is this
based on IETF standards track specifications?" more frequently.

And any wisdom we write down can help informed readers oppose the deployment
of inferior solutions.

Spencer the idealist

----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Moore" <[email-masked]>