Dave Crocker wrote: > > <rant> > This goes to the heart of the current paradigm problem with IETF > decision-making: There is nearly exclusive concern about preventing > all cases of problems, no matter how occasional or minor, with little > apparent concern for the affirmative need to *faciliate* progress. > > For any interesting IETF effort, it is guaranteed that there are > potential problems with the outcome. > > So the mere citation of that potential cannot reasonably justify any > decision, such as denial or such as imposing a requirement for > approval in a process that is, by its nature, intended for providing > coordination rather than for demonstration community support. > </rant> > > The need is for balance, rather than the constant focus *only* on > corner cases. Corner cases are expensive... and rare. I agree with the need for balance, but strongly disagree with the characterization of corner cases. For example, corner cases that are recognized as security holes have a tendency to become frequent exploits. And for anything that operates at the scale of today's Internet, rare cases can cause major problems even when they're not security issues. It would be grossly irresponsible for IETF to ignore identified problems. Of course such problems should be evaluated in terms of risk-versus-benefit. But the discussion is naturally going to focus on the details of those problems rather than the big-picture benefit. You can that the big picture is still being kept in mind because the goal of the discussion of the problems is generally to find a way to solve those problems rather than to throw out the flawed protocol entirely. While I certainly agree that we can get bogged down in fixing trivial problems, especially when those problems are identified late in the process (or identified early, and ignored), I also think we don't go back to the drawing board often enough. Keith _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf