On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 8:08 AM, George, Wes <wesley.george@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I’m surprised that no one has sent this out yet: > http://gigaom.com/2014/04/12/why-i-quit-writing-internet-standards/ > > "Summary: After contributing to standards organizations for more than seven > years, engineer Vidya Narayanan decided it was time to move on. Although she > still believes that these organizations make the Internet a better place, > she wonders about the pace of change versus the pace of organizations." > > My thoughts- > > There are some nuggets of truth in what she says in this article, and in > some of the comments. I think that the problems are real, so there’s value > in taking the criticism constructively, despite the fact that the author > chose to focus on the problems without any suggestions of solutions. > > "while the pace at which standards are written hasn’t changed in many years, > the pace at which the real world adopts software has become orders of > magnitude faster." > … > "Running code and rough consensus, the motto of the IETF, used to be > realizable at some point. … In the name of consensus, we debate frivolous > details forever. In the name of patents, we never finish.” > … > "Unless these standards organizations make radical shifts towards > practicality, their relevance will soon be questionable.” > > I don’t have too many big ideas how to fix these problems, but I’ll at least > take a crack at it in order to spur discussion. My paraphrase of the problem > and some discussion follows. > > - We’ve lost sight of consensus and are too often derailed by a vocal > minority of those willing to endlessly debate a point. > > Part of the solution to that is reiterating what consensus is and is not, > such as draft-resnick-on-consensus so that we don’t confuse a need for > consensus with a need for unanimity. Part of the solution is IETF leadership > helping to identify when we have rough consensus encumbered by a debate that > will never resolve itself, without quieting actual disagreement that needs > continued discussion in order to find a compromise. I don’t have good > suggestions on how to make that second half better. > > - We don’t have nearly enough focus on running code as the thing that helps > to ensure that we’re using our limited cycles on getting the right things > out expediently, and either getting the design right the first time, or > failing quickly and iterating to improve > > The solution here may be that we need to be much more aggressive at > expecting any standards track documents to have running code much earlier in > the process. The other part of that is to renew our focus on actual interop > standards work, probably by charter or in-group feedback, shift focus away > from BCP and info documents. Perhaps when considering whether to proceed > with a given document, we need test as to whether it’s actively > helpful/needed and ensure that we know what audience would be looking at it, > rather than simply ensuring that it is “not harmful” and mostly within the > WG’s chartered focus. My friend @colin_dixon pointed this out to me yesterday, and I've been giving it quite a bit of thought since then (I have a nascent blog on the topic of how open source and standards orgs might productively/efficiently work together; follow up to http://www.sdncentral.com/education/david-meyer-reflections-opendaylight-open-source-project-brocade/2014/03). What I can say is that after seeing the kind of progress that several open source communities make (they do epitomize the best of the IETF's running code/rough consensus ethic), one does have to wonder if traditional standards making is either obsolete or in dire need of a make over. What is needed, IMO, is a reimagining of how the standards process interacts with the open source movement specifically focused on how they can compliment one another. --dmm