----- Original Message ----- From: "Donald Eastlake 3rd" <dee3@torque.pothole.com> > > I wish you would finally get around to deciding that the IETF is > hopeless so you would devote your efforts to other standards > organizations that you would find more competant. > http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/select/1098/int.html POSTEL: It's perfectly appropriate to be upset. I thought of it in a slightly different way--like a space that we were exploring and, in the early days, we figured out this consistent path through the space: IP, TCP, and so on. What's been happening over the last few years is that the IETF is filling the rest of the space with every alternative approach, not necessarily any better. Every possible alternative is now being written down. And it's not useful. .....Concerning your [Postel's] comment about filling up the space, there is this story about an experiment with an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters generating the works of Shakespeare. Well, we've done the experiment; we've deployed an infinite number of typewriters and what they're [generating] is protocol specs. CERF: We're getting the Shakespearean equivalent of "To be or not to be, that is the grzzornay."