> [mailto:owner-newtrk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Eric Rosen > Eliot> Even if someone *has* implemented the telnet TACACS user > Eliot> option, would a user really want to use it? > > Eric> I don't know. Do you? > > Eliot> Yes, I do. Many of us do. And that's the point. > > I'm sure you think you know, but I don't know that you > know, which means that a lot of people have to waste a lot > of time preventing you from doing damage. > > Are you also the one who "knows" that OSPF demand circuits > are never used? . newtrk Should the fact that someone uses something mean that it should be considered a standard? If so the MARID group was a mistake, SPF should simply have been accepted as is without discussion. Lets do a thought experiment, should EBCDIC be considered a 'standard'? It is certainly used but there is no imaginable sense in which anyone would ever suggest building on top of it. The whole point of standards is that you are narrowing down the range of design choices. That means discarding standards that are of antiquarian interest only. The number of Internet users is now approaching or may have reached a billion. Please make an effort to recognize your responsibility to the 99% of those users for which the debate on legacy technology is irrelevant but have some very real and very urgent issues with the technology they are faced with using. What is meant by taking a spec off standard is that it will no longer be maintained. This means no more updates, but it also means that future specs will not be constrained by it either. This is important for two reasons, first there is simply too much junk that is too badly organized that people demand backwards compatibility for. The early ASRG discussions had folk prattling on about the need to continue to support UUCP. The second reason is the opposite of the first, there are some very important dependencise that should be maintained but are not because they get lost in the sheer volume of irrelevant cruft. As Larry King's first boss told him: This is a communications business. Like it or not the Internet is now the Web and the influence any party can have is dependent on their ability to communicate a coherent message. The IETF has been unable to communicate a coherent message about its work. Take a look at the IETF web site and compare it to the W3C and OASIS sites. Finding out what the IETF has done through the web site takes a lot of effort. W3C and OASIS tell you their list of achievements straight up on their front door. Each one of the crufty irrelevant specicfications is diluting the IETF message. If you continue to tell people that backwards compatibility with obsolete mainframe terminals based on specifications from the punch card age is important while failing to tell people that stopping the current Internet crime wave is important then it is very easy for people to dismiss you. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf