Money money money... Is that what all these businesses think about? What is cheapest? Not all, but the vast majority. The IETF standards were and are compiled by voluntary contributions, approved and revised by other voluntary contributions. Therefor, you can say that the internet is run by volunteers. I personally believe that it is amazing that volunteers cooperate with each other to this extent. I would say that the internet is one of the most complex things developed. Fiber and wire running across the world, connecting most computers together. Complex, successful, and run by volunteers. Welcome to the IETF :-D -----Original Message----- From: owner-ietf@IETF.ORG [mailto:owner-ietf@IETF.ORG] On Behalf Of Jan Meijer Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 5:51 PM To: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu Cc: todd glassey; ietf@IETF.ORG Subject: Re: How many standards or protocols... > Over in Detroit, they design cars. They do a *LOT* of market research. > Market research may say that 75% of people interested in a certain model > car would be interested in a rear spoiler - but it would be quite negligent > to let the market researchers decide what size bolts to use to attach it > to the car, wouldn't it? Market researchers and the like were the ones that decided just waiting for lawsuits to come along and pay damages would be cheaper then getting all the vehicles back and replace the all-to-easily-exploding-gastank. This is just one example that shows that the ethics of marketing and management persons can be...different. It is quite safe to say they are generally devoted to making money, not technically sound products. If by sheer coincidence a technical soundness would imply more money are they prepared to 'go for the best'. > It may be informative to go read the list of authors of the RFCs that come out > of that area, and ask yourself if your army of salespeople understands security > better than they do..... You might also want to go read Bruce Schneier's > "Secrets and Lies" and/or "Applied Cryptography", and learn why proprietary > security solutions are rarely, if ever, secure. And, while at it, think about the reason why so many closed-source-software-administrators are patching their software all the time. Not because that software has been designed so thouroughly. It would not be because marketing and management has forced them to push something out while it had not been properly finished and tested, now would it? I'm quite happy with the IETF process. It has produced the Internet, which is one of the most complex constructs on this planet. And it works. Jan