Re: Chaos, Process

-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Hunting <sam_hunting@yahoo.com>
To: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
Cc: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>; xml-uri@w3.org <xml-uri@w3.org>; Simon
St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com>
Date: Friday, June 02, 2000 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: Chaos, Process


>--- Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org> wrote:
>> > > > [simon st-laurent writes]
>> > > > From the outside of the black box, there appears to be an
>> > > > enormous amount of randomness inside the black box.  The view
>> > > > on the inside may well be different.  We simply have no way of
>> > > > knowing, and being told that documents published as NOTEs
>> > > > have 'axiomatic' status makes life even more confusing.
>
>> > > [tim berners-lee responds]
>> > > (Something can be axiomatic in the design without being published
>> > > at all!)
>
>[Sam Hunting wrote]
>> > Debater's points aside, the picture of a vendor consortium leading
>> > "the Web to its "full potential" (TBL's personal architecture
>> > document) on the basis of secret (or at least unpublished) "axioms"

>> > gives me the chills.

Sam, give me a break. ;-)  I was arging by extreme example that publication
status
of a document and the logical status of the contents in the design are not
necessarily matched.   I  was not saying the architecture *is* secret!
 In this case, the architecure document was always totally public.
The http://DesignIssues notes (such as I could get time to write them have
been
on the web on the very first web server. They have always been public.

The architecture document itself
(http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Architecture) was
a response to a request by working groups for a list of points which seemed
to have
arisen as rules for design.  It is misisng some bits in many areas and it
isn't as though
it will ever have mathematical completeness, but it an attempt to extract
for inspection
the gleaned architectural insights of the community.

And yes, it is personal, but we are looking at possible open processes for
evolving it,
as I have mentioned on this list.

>> >
>> > The Internet sure wasn't built this way...
>
>[Dan Connolly responds:]
>> What makes you think it was not? I'm pretty certain it was...
>> TCP, IP, SMTP, FTP etc. were specified and
>> deployed long before the June 1996 publication of
>>
>> Architectural Principles of the Internet
>> http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1958.txt
>
>TCP, IP, SMTP, FTP were developed based on "secret (or at least
>unpublished) 'axioms'"? Please clarify.



Dan pointed, I think,  out that the Internet's architectural principles were
written up
after they had been elucidated retrospecively from systems and code and
specifications already written and running.

Nothing was secret, but there was a period when the principles of design
such
as decentralization and tolerance were all in the oral tradition rather than
any
documents.  It was written down when the growth of the net put the oral
tradition under
too much stress.

This situation may be analogous. It is only now, with the confluence of many
cultures, that these things have to be written down, and we have to have
these tide-race discussions where cultures meet.

(Try going to the IETF and proposing an alternative network layer to IP.
Try proposing a centralized system which allows one organization to control
or monitor all a system's activity.  You will meet a lot of resistance.)

If you insist on having your axioms in advance of your design, then you are
advocating top-down design.  Bottom-up design *is* capable of creating
systems which have strong universal principles but they are often written up
after
the systems have been proven with running code.

>S[am Hunting].


Tim Berners-Lee

Received on Friday, 2 June 2000 20:34:35 UTC