[ih] IETF relevance (was Memories of Flag Day?)

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 29-Aug-23 05:52, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
> Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
>> On 8/24/2023 4:07 PM, John Klensin via Internet-history wrote:
>>> Probably a larger fraction of applications work has come to the
>>> IETF already half-developed and in search of refinement and
>>> validation by
>>> the community
>>
>> I'm sure there are examples, but I can't think of an application
>> protocol that was originated in the IETF over, say, the last 25 years,
>> that has seen widespread success.
>>
>> d/
>>
> Seems to me that HTTP remains under the IETF umbrella.  

But it did *not* originate in the IETF. It actually originated about
20 metres horizontally and 3 metres vertically from my office at CERN,
more than a year before TimBL presented it at IETF 23 (I was wrong a few
days ago to assert that IETF 26 was Tim's first attendance). The WWW BOF
at IETF 26 was more than 2 years after HTTP was first deployed, to my
personal knowledge.

> Is it not the
> RFC process, and IANA, that actually matter, in the scheme of things?

In the case of HTTP, it was running code that long preceded both rough
consensus and an RFC. I think this is completely normal and still the
best method. Second best is code developed in parallel with the spec.
Third best is OSI.

     Brian