> -----Original Message----- > From: ietf [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Melinda Shore > Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2016 10:31 PM > To: Brian E Carpenter; Suzanne Woolf > Cc: IETF discussion list > Subject: Re: bettering open source involvement > > On 7/28/16 1:06 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > > And there's our problem, right there. Protocols without APIs are > > pretty much useless these days. IPv6 without a socket API would have > > been an abject failure. Without RFC 2133, RFC 2292 and their > > successors, who knows how the POSIX and Winsock support for IPv6 would > > have turned out? > > Not specifying APIs in the IETF clearly doesn't mean that there are no APIs, > clearly. > > I'm certainly open to the possibility that we start tackling APIs but I'm not > sure it's a terrific idea. For one thing, we already have too much work. For > another, I'm not sure we'd produce particularly good APIs. It's a different skill > from developing and specifying network protocols. And thirdly, I'm not > convinced that the people implementing our protocols would want IETF- > developed APIs. > > This is completely subjective but my own sense is that the > #1 problem we have related to open source projects we take years to > produce specifications. > This! +1000