IMHO, *way* too many I*E*TF work groups get chartered based on an idea. We then spend tons of resources on figuring out if the idea will work. We produce lots of half-baked documents with little basis in working code. Then folks try implementing what's been spec'ed, find it doesn't work, but then find a ton of resistance to change, because the specs are three years old and "we don't want to break draft-mumble-05 implementations." If something is an idea, let's make it politically acceptable for the "work" to be done in the I*R*TF first. Yes, I agree that the process should be fuzzy - the AD should be able to figure out if something is likely to work in the real world. However, building a work group out of an idea, rather than somewhat working code or a demonstration framework, should be the exception, rather than the rule. -----Original Message----- From: ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dave Crocker Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 1:13 PM To: Jeffrey Hutzelman Cc: ietf@xxxxxxxx Subject: Working Group chartering [snip] And here is where we have the major disconnect. Working groups start from a wide variety of places. Some start with an idea. Some with a detailed proposal. Some with a detailed specification and some with existing and deployed technology. When a working group starts, it must make the strategic decision about how much prior work to preserve, versus how much new work to encourage or require. [snip] _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf