--On Tuesday, February 05, 2013 12:38 +0100 Eliot Lear
<lear@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> So don't try.
>
> +1. In fact in the ITU context they will sometimes spend half
> a day on a meeting report. I really don't think we want to go
> there.
>
>
> What I would like not to have happen is that we spend any time
> bickering over who said what, especially if it detracts from
> the business of developing excellent standards. I think your
> point, Dave, about synthesis being left to historians is a
> good one, and I might go farther, and say that the whole
> endeavor should be. But having at least a record from
> individauls about what *they* said or meant is, I suppose, not
> unreasonable.
One additional and complementary observation: It has often been
observed that we (and many other bodies and contexts) get better
results when no one worries about taking credit (IIR, someone
(Fred Baker?) even had a signature line to that effect for a
while). One might even suggest that one of the reasons early
ARPANET/ Internet developments worked better than the IETF
process of today is that there was wide recognition that it was
necessarily a collaborative effort with many people contributing
ideas and no one wanting to seize credit. I cringe every time
we, or the RFC Editor, get into an argument about numbers of
authors, company names and/or titles in various places, etc.
Trying to do contemporary history (or other oxymorons) on IETF
work that identifies the specific evolution of protocols and
ideas would, IMO, tend to reinforce those impulses toward
identification of inventors and claiming of credit. If it did,
it would almost certainly be damaging to efficiency and/or
quality independent of the resource and other problems.
best,
john