Subject: RE: ISSUE: excessive perfectionism (was Re: ISSUE: Timeframes sho ld be focused on IETF purposes, not markets)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:48:14 +0100

Keith,

I'm not suggesting that we favour a sub-set; rather that we try to include
all the *customers* ( stakeholders or users, if you prefer ) that we can
identify - e.g. vendors, ISPs, researchers, end-users.....

I realise that such a list can not be comprehensive forever, as new types of
user will emerge;  but it does at least give us a checklist of who we should
currently be considering.

	Regards,

	Graham Travers

	International Standards Manager
	BT Exact

	e-mail:   [email-masked]
	tel:      +44(0) 1359 235086
	mobile:   +44(0) 7808 502536
	fax:      +44(0) 1359 235087

	HWB279, PO Box 200,London, N18 1ZF, UK

	BTexact Technologies is a trademark of British Telecommunications
plc
	Registered office: 81 Newgate Street London EC1A 7AJ
	Registered in England no. 1800000

	This electronic message contains information from British
Telecommunications plc which may be privileged or confidential. The
information is intended to be for the use of the individual(s) or entity
named above. If you are not the intended recipient be aware that any
disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information
is prohibited. If you have received this electronic message in error, please
notify us by telephone or email (to the numbers or address above)
immediately.

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Moore [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: 11 June 2003 16:36
To: Travers,G,Graham,XVT TRAVERG R
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: ISSUE: excessive perfectionism (was Re: ISSUE: Timeframes
sho ld be focused on IETF purposes, not markets)

> It's been said of I-D's, and it's true of these wider issues too: give the
> definitions before starting to discuss them.  

makes sense.

> Do we have any working IETF definitions of *current* customers, mission,
etc
> ?  If not, I think we should solve that problem before trying to
understand
> *customers' requirements*, *furthering the mission of the IETF*, etc.

As I said earlier, I think IETF's "customers" are all of those affected by
something that IETF does.  It strikes me as counterproductive to think that
our goal is to benefit some subset of those people without regard to the
harm
that we're doing to some other subset of those people.  

But maybe "customer" is a poor word to use, because it invites confusion of
IETF's motives with those of a business whose motive is profit, and which 
doesn't need to be very concerned with the interests of those who don't
buy its products or services.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 11:57:32 -0400

> identify - e.g. vendors, ISPs, researchers, end-users.....

I agree that if we're going to think in terms of "our job is to serve our
customers" we need to define it in this way.  And I think you're entirely
correct to point out that we need to define the term, because I suspect
there's been a substantial divergence in how people have been thinking about
it.  

I've often had the impression that the individuals pushing a particular
protocol considered the protocol's "customers" to be only those who would be
making commercial products using the protocol - or essentially, their
employers.  And given that the employers are the ones paying them for their
work on the protocol, it's easy to see how they'd get that view.

Getting back to the market timeliness concern, it might be that we should try
to separate concepts like "having the protocol finalized while there's still
a market opportunity for deployment" from "providing sufficient motivation to
potential implementors to work on the protocol specification" from "making
sure that the protocol does useful things while minimizing harm".  A concept
like "giving customers what they want" could encompass all of these if you
define "customer" broadly enough, but it masks the underlying conflicts.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 10:20:48 +0200

--On onsdag, juni 11, 2003 16:48:14 +0100 [email-masked] wrote:

> I realise that such a list can not be comprehensive forever, as new types
> of user will emerge;  but it does at least give us a checklist of who we
> should currently be considering.

In a very real sense, I believe the customers of the IETF process are us - 
the IETF participants.

*Our* customers are the ISPs and the end-users, the researchers, the 
enterprises, the governments and the fabric of society itself.

But I think it's *our* responsibility to set our targets; abdicating that 
responsibility to an abstract, unquantifiable notion like "market need" 
will not give us quality, relevant specifications for the Internet.

Abusing random people's names....

I want to accept as vaild input into the target-setting process Jim Bound 
saying "I need the XYZ specification to be completed by August 27, 2004, 
because I have a Sept 1 spec freeze, a 3-month QA cycle, and product 
shipments planned for February 2005 that intend to incorporate that 
functionality".

And I want to also accept as valid input John Loughney saying "XYZ cannot
be completed by August 27, because ABC is barely going to meet its deadline 
of completing its spec by July, so XYZ cannot possibly incorporate that in 
less than 3 months; we can't make a good spec before October".

But I don't want to accept as valid input someone saying "XYZ is urgently 
needed in the market (no background given), so we have to abandon the ABC 
dependency and publish the spec in February 2004 whether it works or not".

See the difference?

                        Harald