Jay, I copied you explicitly on this because, while I'll try to
find time in the next few days to go through your survey, I want
to make an observation after looking at the first page, one that
relates critically to the comments above: at least IMO, the best
interests of the Internet and the IETF are going to be best
served by being as inclusive as possible, including inclusive of
people with different backgrounds, habits, and consequent
preferences about tools and ways of working. If we say that we
ran a survey and the vast majority prefer method A or B and
hence we are going to concentrate our energy and resources
there, we need to understand that people who prefer method C or
D (or who have attitudes toward A and B more negative than those
Keith expresses above about XML) are as likely to drop out and
go elsewhere than to learn, and become enthused about, A or B.
And that situation could be even worse if there is only an A and
no B. Were this or other things to leave an IETF that was a
wonderful place for people with one type of history, work
styles, and preferences to do their work but with everyone else
shut out, its opinions and consensus would not be worth much
consideration by the wider world and it would basically not be
worth the resources to keep it going. No one issue or decision
is likely to produce that outcome, but, again IMO, it is more
important to concentrate on preserving diversity along those
dimensions (not just demographic ones) rather than asking
questions about the preferences of those who happen to be active
now and assuming the answers tell us where we should be going.
Certainly there are resource and common-sense limits on how far
we can or should go but caution about doing a survey and then
going with majority opinions or practices would seem to be in
order if only because, almost by definition, you aren't going to
hear from those who have walked away.
How about we wait to see what the data says before we plan mitigations for hypothetical impacts of hypothetical edge cases?
The survey has value for multiple groups - Tools Team, Tools Architecture and Strategy Team, RSOC and rfc-interest - and there are likely to be discussions on how to respond to it in all of them.
