--On Wednesday, 07 July, 2004 21:47 +0200 "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin"
<jefsey@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> At 23:22 06/07/04, John C Klensin wrote:
>> Vendors who are going to do these things will -- based on the
>> fact that they are being done already -- do them, with or
>> without this document. And that includes providers who are
>> doing very little that we would recognize as "internet
>> service" characterizing themselves as "ISPs". If this
>> document can accomplish anything, it is, as several people
>> have pointed out, provide a definitional basis for claiming
>> that a vendor is lying about what is being provided. Put
>> differently, the theory behind it is to give
>> operators/providers an opportunity to disclose what they are
>> doing in a more or less clear way. If they choose to
>> exaggerate what they are offering, or to lie about their
>> services, that is a problem that this document cannot solve
>> and is not intended to try.
>
> John,
> This is quite ambitious to say "lying". Let say that it
> permits to say that a word is not used in John Klensin's way -
> may be not in an IETF ways.
No, I actually had a different case in mind, and the
clarification may be useful. I used "lying" above to described
an intentional act, e.g., "we know the definitions say we a
doing 'A', but we will advertise 'B' in the hope of tricking
people". Those who are not aware of the definitions, or decide
to ignore them entirely, are in other categories. As I have
said before, only a government --typically a regulator or
legislature-- can make _any_ terminology mandatory, so there is
no question here of "forcing" (to repeat Ohta-san's term) anyone
to do (or not do) anything. Definitions can also be written
into contracts by saying things like "X will be supplied, where
'X' is as defined in..."; such definitions may be more or less
useful depending on circumstances that are of more interest to
lawyers than to an engineering group.
> This permits to understand why,
> what is different, what are the con and pros. To have a
> reference is always a good point.
If I correctly understand your comment, we are in agreement.
> We are starting AFRAC as an experimental national Common
> Reference Center. The target is to understand how such center
> may support interapplications, contain metastructural risks,
> support dedicated governance and intergovernance relations,
> etc. Masataka Otha's remark is quite interesting, since it
> shows that he doubts that non-IETF community members, while
> members of the Internet Gobal community may not use some words
> in the same way, or should not ne encouraged to use them.
> Obviously not sharing the same referential creates confusion.
> (IMHO we are at the core of the networking notion - thank you
> for the initaitive I called for for years).
>
> I am going to use your draft as an "IETF reference lexicon".
Please do not. While you are welcome to use it, it is, at the
moment, only _my_ reference lexicon. Not even the people who
contributed significantly to the document are responsible for
it. And, indeed, I'm not completely happy with all of the
definitions and categorizations: they are just the best I could
do with a limited amount of time and effort. Characterizing it
as an "IETF reference" anything requires some evidence of IETF
community consensus. That may or may not exist, but, under IETF
principles, only the IESG can reach a conclusion on that subject.
> We will see if someone wants to translate it as several
> concept may differ in French or in other latin languages (I do
> not know about other langages).
This might be very useful.
> Is that label agreeable to you?
See above.
> Are you interested in continuing building on it when new words
> are questionned?
To an extremely limited extent, yes. The limits are imposed by
my conviction that something like this is not going to be useful
unless it is quite stable. So addition or modification of basic
terms should be completed quickly or not at all. One could even
make a case for trimming everything but the basic categories out
of this document and then producing a second, more informational
one, that identified the two collections of additional terms.
Personally, I don't think that is worth the effort and the added
confusion it would cause -- anyone actually using these
definitions can divide them up as they find useful.
regards,
john
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