Why is IETF hostile to reusable technologies?

I have several theories:

1. at any given time, most IETF participants are "new" and presumably
have little experience with large numbers of protocols.   

2. something that contributes to (1) may be the tendency for IETF to 
favor work in "new" and emerging technologies, where the industry 
participants are more likely to be young.

3. another part of the reason for (1) may be that IETF burns people 
out.  experienced people get tired of repeating the same arguments to
less experienced people.  those who stick around are likely to
get appointed to be a WG chair or IESG or IAB, further increasing
their frustration and the probability that they will leave.

4. perhaps in an attempt to avoid controversy within a group, IETF 
requires most of its working groups to be narrowly-scoped.  such 
conditions favor development of a new protocol for each separate 
problem.

5. IETF participation has become expensive, both in terms of the
amount of attention required and the amount of travel money.
This favors participation by those who can justify the expense by 
saying that it's vital to get the standard out ASAP and/or to make 
sure the next release of the product conforms to the standard.
In other words, it favors those working on standards that closely
relate to specific products over those working on standards that
are reusable across a wide range of products.

how close did I get?

Keith

Received on Wednesday, 28 November 2001 15:37:32 UTC