> The likes of implementers (of protocols), whether in the open-source community > or as an employee of a vendor of hardware or software, should be given as > much, if not more, consideration. > > Ditto folks who are involved in designing/building host operating systems or > equivalent embedded systems. I fully agree with this. Yet the opinions of "implementers" may not be easy to distinguish initially. For example, some of the IETF's most famous "controversies" turned out not to be much of a contest when looked at in retrospect -- the implementers ended up all on one side of the debate. The question is whether this was obvious at the time, and whether we could have settled the arguments sooner. There are some current situations in the IETF, where IMHO it is quite obvious that a consensus of implementers exists, as judged by interoperable implementations. Yet the IETF persists in taking an alternate path with (seemingly) little prospect of success. Often in these cases the "bogo-standards" are being pushed by the WG chair(s) or ADs with little or no real backing from the IETF community. I'd suggest it would be preferrable for these efforts to "fail early" rather than taking years to meet their inevitable demise. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf