Re: Why is IETF hostile to reusable technologies?

You missed at least one:

6. Many of us old-farts are strong, opinioned know-it-alls who think that
what we've done applies to everything, and that if the other guy just
understood things as well as we did, they'd do it our way, whether it
be X, or MIME, or HTTP, or (fill in you favorite protocol you are expert
at here)....  It is a rare bird who has dealt with more than one application
protocol in detail, much less one built for a relatively wide range of
applications to use.

(I say this only half tounge in cheek, and that I carefully put myself
into this catagory, though I note that IETF developed apps protocols are
typically for one vertical application (or codification of outside effort),
and not a generic protocol framework).

The young guys with a problem don't necessarily get heard, unless your
job is to listen to lots of different people building applications.
And those people don't go to the IETF right now.

More seriously is to elaborate your .4: to build such a protocol framework, 
you need participation (at least at some level) horizonally across the 
IETF, when it is vertically organized.

And I think development of a protocol framework would need to be mostly 
outside the IETF until a pretty concrete prototype and running code had 
been produced, to avoid the other problems you note.  Arguably, this is 
already happening, in the XML community.  But as things are currently
running, it will be too late for the IETF to influence the outcome,
as far as I can tell.

			- Jim

--
Jim Gettys
Cambridge Research Laboratory
Compaq Computer Corporation
jg@pa.dec.com

Received on Wednesday, 28 November 2001 15:46:36 UTC