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

[John Klensin]

Dave,
Depending on how "originated" is defined and what hair-splitting one wants
to do, I think that could probably be said of almost any protocol developed
in the last 20 years or so, in any Area, and possibly even without the
restriction to success.  I can't imagine someone coming to the IESG today,
saying "I see this problem and I think the IETF should form a WG and figure
out a solution".  I think they would be told to come back when they had
some ideas, to take the problem to the IRTF and see what traction they got
there, or maybe to see if they could organize a mailing list and get people
to propose solutions and a WG charter.   The result of any of those steps
prior to serious IETF work starting in a WG would be work that did not
originate in the IETF.  Any protocol originating in an individual
submission to the IETF would almost certainly have to be in a much more
complete state before an AD would allow it to be put out for Last Call.

I could see a refinement of an existing successful protocol coming much
closer to "originating" in the IETF, but that is a bit of a different
category too.

Now, I think there might be a useful distinction between protocol work that
is brought to the IETF that is thought to be complete and with the
expectation that the IETF will approve it without making substantive
changes and work that is more preliminary and where the IETF is expected
(or at least encouraged) to do  significant refinement and improvement.
For better or worse, I think we have seen both.  But neither of those cases
involves work that originated in the IETF no matter how significant the
changes might have been in the second case.

So I think you are right but I don't believe it has much of anything to do
with the things I'm concerned about.

    john


On Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 11:12 PM Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> 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/
>
> --
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
> mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social
>
>