I find your definition of the Internet delightfully ambiguous. I was taught that the Internet (as opposed to an internet or the internet) was the public network accessible through public IPv4 addresses (this predates IPv6) ie the Internet ceased at a firewall or other such IP level gateway. Reading your definition, I cannot tell where you stand; are firewalls and networks behind them included in IETF mission or not? Tom Petch -----Original Message----- From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: ietf@xxxxxxxx <ietf@xxxxxxxx> Date: 11 February 2004 01:59 Subject: Continuing the story - another stab at an IETF mission statement >Apologies to those who are already tired of this debate, and those think >that we have enough of a clear idea of what the IETF mission is, and that >discussing more is harmful to the community, but.... > >I attempted to incorporate the latest discussions into an internet-draft, >which I managed to get out just before the deadline.... > > draft-alvestrand-ietf-mission-00.txt > >The core of the draft: > > > The goal of the IETF is to make the Internet work. > > The mission of the IETF is to produce high quality, relevant > technical and engineering documents that influence the way people > design, use and manage the Internet in such a way as to make the > Internet work better. > These documents include protocol standards, best current practices > and informational documents of various kinds. > > The IETF will pursue this mission in adherence to the following > cardinal principles: > > Open process - that any interested participant can in fact > participate in the work, know what is being decided, and make his > or her voice heard on the issue. Part of this principle is our > commitment to making our documents, our WG mailing lists, our > attendance lists and our meeting minutes publicly available on the > Net. > > Technical competence - that the issues on which the IETF produces its > documents are issues where the IETF has the competence needed to > speak to them, and that the IETF is willing to listen to > technically competent input from any source. > Technical competence also means that we expect IETF output to be > designed to sound network engineering principles - this is also > often referred to as "engineering quality". > > Volunteer Core - that our members and our leadership are people who > come to the IETF because they want to work for the IETF's > purposes. > > Rough consensus and running code - We make standards based on the > combined engineering judgement of our participants and our real- > world experience in implementing and deploying our specifications. > > >The rest of the document is trying to define the terms and explain the >issues faced in formulating the mission statement. >An appendix (to be deleted before publication) lists some other attempts at >formulating a mission statement - the purpose of including this is to give >honor to those who worked on them, and to allow those who debate the issue >to see what other attempts to formulate the mission could look like. > >Comments are welcome, of course! > > Harald > >