Re: The "purpose of the IETF" thing

[Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>]

> > I think the "high quality, relevant standards for the Internet"
> > is a fine capsule description of *one* thing we do.

> I think that the IESG at the London IETF (but we have a few new
> members now) was more or less in agreement with that *one* thing
> we do or at least need to do. 

> Form the discussions on the problem-statement and the latest 
> IESG plenary, I am not so sure that we have IETF-wide consensus
> on that. Do we?

FWIW, when asked during the plenary whether everyone in the IETF had a
shared goal of HQ standards (I forget the exact wording), I said I
disagreed. I wish it was the goal, but it's not for everyone. Look at
the RTG community, for example, where underspecifying some of most
core protocols has been a chronic problem. Some folk there most
certainly do not want to document everything in sufficient detail to
get interoperability.

Maybe it's a relatively small percentage of folk with this view. I
sure hope so. But it also seems like a lot of folk want to have their
stuff be the standard, and don't even care if there are are 5
standards for the same thing. I have a hard time reconciling the "let
a 1000 flowers bloom" view with a desire for relevant HQ standards.

Thomas