Subject: RE: Fixed font v multiple fonts

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 07:35:02 -0700

Lars does not have the right to impose his decision on me.

As for rough consensus, the PROBLEM I am identifying is that there is simply
no forum where the majority of the membership can give their views on the
matter.

I am raising it as a problem because it was raised as one of the reasons why
a group of prominent engineers want to propose changes to SMTP, MIME and
S/MIME outside of IETF process.

It is certainly not the most important, but it is the easiest one to fix.

I would have thought that the near certainty that the Internet standards are
going to be forked would be a concern to this group. Obviously I was wrong,
you would all much rather run a debating society with no influence where you
are in absolute control.

		Phill

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Seng [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 9:41 AM
> To: Hallam-Baker, Phillip
> Cc: 'Lars-Erik Jonsson (LU/EAB)'; Keith Moore;
> [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Fixed font v multiple fonts
> 
> 
> I guess when the rough consensus is not going your way, it is 
> "top-down 
> decision". Hello??
> 
> Lars have his rights to his opinion as much as you do.
> 
> -James Seng
> 
> > I have never spent half as much time getting a document 
> format right as I
> > have for the IETF. Even the W3C rules for HTML are not as 
> much hassle.
> > 
> > Again, the issue is who gets to decide.  
> 
>

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 18:20:39 +0200

--On torsdag, juli 10, 2003 07:35:02 -0700 "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> As for rough consensus, the PROBLEM I am identifying is that there is
> simply no forum where the majority of the membership can give their views
> on the matter.

The closest thing we have is the IETF plenary. And it's been consistently 
*against* any particular proposed change to document formast. If you don't 
want to respect that - your choice.

> I am raising it as a problem because it was raised as one of the reasons
> why a group of prominent engineers want to propose changes to SMTP, MIME
> and S/MIME outside of IETF process.
>

As you've seen - that's probably not true (that it's easy to fix).

> I would have thought that the near certainty that the Internet standards
> are going to be forked would be a concern to this group. Obviously I was
> wrong, you would all much rather run a debating society with no influence
> where you are in absolute control.

As in open source, the power to fork is the last recourse against 
inappropriate leadership. So I won't claim that they're wrong to do so.

But until they show their faces and say what they want, I cannot possibly 
evaluate their desire to change these protocols.

[[Out of curiosity: What are the permitted submission formats to OASIS? Am 
I allowed to use ASCII?
(their publication formats are PDF and HTML - a brief scan of their website 
showed no policy document about input formats.) ]]

                 Harald

---

From: James Seng <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:50:15 +0800

> Lars does not have the right to impose his decision on me.

And you have the right to impose your decision on him?

For one who advocate "openness and democratic", I expect you to have 
more tolerance for differences in opinions.

ps: For a person working on IDN and other I18N issues in IETF, I think 
that ASCII format has its limitation. Perhaps something along this?
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office

> S/MIME outside of IETF process.

Sure they can. Heck, I even redesigned DNS in my lab but that does not 
means anyone else should care about it.

> It is certainly not the most important, but it is the easiest one to fix.

Once again, I disagree with you. It isn't as simple as it you think.

> you would all much rather run a debating society with no influence where you

While there is a issue with the "balance of power" within IETF, the 
ultimate power still lies in the users to adopt the standard in IETF. 
NOTHING in the current process prevents industry to adopt or user 
dropping IETF standards.

The fact they still doing using the technology suggest that IETF must be 
doing something right. Of course, that does not means everything is "right".

-James Seng