Re: Anybody can participate in the IETF (Was: Why is IPv6 broken?)

[Joel Jaeggli <joelja () bogus com>]

On Jul 12, 2011, at 12:40 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:

> Leo Bicknell wrote:
> In short, make it easy for the operators to participate at the right
> > time in the process.  It will be better for everyone!
>
> Unfortunately, where you want to be inserted into the process is when everybody has
> said their piece 80-dozen times and are tired and just want to get on with life. So
> it doesn't matter whether you're an operator or the IESG -- you're not going to make
> many friends at that point telling them they got it wrong.
>
> On the other hand, is it really too much to ask operators -- especially big ones with
> a vested interest in not having the IETF throw crap over the wall for them to debug --
> to *hire* a liaison whose job is to monitor a swath of working groups, bofs, etc, and
> participate the entire way through? I imagine they'd be pretty popular amongst clueful
> vendors, and would give you a leg up knowing what's good and what's just sales-drek.

By definition if crap has been thrown of the wall and you're trying to deploy it, that means:

* you have a commercial or other compelling reason to run it.
* someone has implemented it.

the bar to make something relevant on those two points is much higher, than the one that involves submitting an 
internet draft. getting something through draft to publication via a working group is itself a rather involved process.

Plenty of crap is thrown over the wall which you will never use, because the marketplace doesn't care, nobody built it, 
nobody has that problem it turns out, it turned out to be too hard or it was actually a dumb idea. in the market place 
for idea this seems normal and healthy.

> Mike