On Jun 24, 2006, at 8:55 AM, Keith Moore wrote:
That's not quite sufficient, because most WGs aren't proceeding according to good engineering discipline (e.g. they're doing things in the wrong order, like trying to define the protocol before the problem space is understood)
I'd generalize that. I have never seen *any* standards org do a good job of inventing new technology. I've been working with the soon-to- wind-down Atompub group for a couple of years and we got a pretty good result I think (if you can judge by implementations & deployments). There were a few things in our favor - a high level of interest and energy, lots of experience on the WG, decent editors - but the key thing was there was a ton of hands-on experience in the space (syndication technology). A whole lot of the key arguments could be resolved by appeal to example and experience.
When standards orgs go out to invent stuff in unexplored territory you get disasters like OSI networking, CORBA, and in the current landscape, WS-*. I suppose there are exceptions but I don't know of any.
-Tim _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf