Subject: RE: what are the real problems

From: "Wijnen, Bert (Bert)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 14:38:22 +0200

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: donderdag 22 mei 2003 14:03
> To: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: what are the real problems
> 
> 
> Hi Scott,
> 
> > > In some cases, this may require exploring
> > > more than one path, and eventually choosing the one that works
> > 
> > or maybe, just maybe, let the people who wnat to use the technology
> > do the choosing
> > 
> > not a 1,000 flowers but sometimes 2 or 3
> 
> I agree - I'm not a rabid free-market person, but I do think it is 
> appropriate to allow users of the technology to have some say in this;
> and that may require allowing 2 or 3 protocols that do similar things.
> 
I suspect we're starting to diverge. 
My last comment on this is:

  If we can absolutely not agree on the single best solution, then
  probably gaining some experience with 2 (or 3 ??) solutions may
  make sense. To do so... I would say, let us put them in Experimental
  stage, cause apparently we know not ebough to make up our mind on
  what should be the standard.

Bert

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 22:30:43 -0500

> On the other hand the IETF still manages to undertake a certain amount 
> of
> Bad Idea filtering, and the criteria for a Bad Idea has some reference 
> to
> a generic engineering model of the Internet as we know it.

> If the only role of the IETF is to bless the offerings from certain 
> vendors
> who hold significant market share and to soundly rubbish offerings from
> those vendors to whom the Market has shown displeasure, then
> we are all wasting our time.

I think there's a middle ground between the extreme of preventing 
anything from happening that might change anything, and the extreme of 
blessing everything.   My experience has been that we tend to err more 
towards the former than the latter (indeed, I think there's no danger 
of us erring towards the latter), and I've seen some very good ideas 
shot down as a result.