[ih] "The Great Debate"

[the keyboard of geoff goodfellow]

any vigorous enmity at that IETF meeting directed towards Marshall Rose for
the part in "The Open Book" regarding The IETF standards processes, the
"many fine lunches and dinners", et al. should be summarily (re-)directed
towards yours truly... who ghost wrote that section of "The Open Book"

if your wondering about/what/why might have been the "inspiration" for
doing it... well it was Exactly The Same Impetus of yours truly
facilitating and launching the Internet Crucible publication, as summarily
explained, detailed and exampled in:

https://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/2025-April/010449.html

g

On Mon, Apr 27, 2026 at 11:35 AM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> On 4/26/2026 5:26 PM, Carl Malamud via Internet-history wrote:
> > In regards to Marshall and the OSI question, he gave a memorable speech
> at
> > an IETF plenary about how he had implemented OSI and he considered it to
> be
> > road kill in motion. He got a standing ovation from Jon Postel and
> others.
>
>
> Assuming we are thinking of the same event, this was Marshall's first
> time at an IETF and his presence and his presentation were carefully
> arranged.
>
> Marshall was working for me, at the time, and had just published his
> wonderful tome, The Open Book, about OSI.
>
> It included some discussion of standards processes, including reference
> to the IETF.  I'm not finding the relevant text that he made about
> standards processes but it included a summary assessment that these
> meetings were marked by "many fine lunches and dinners".
>
> He later reported that the OSI folk who read the book pretty much nodded
> in agreement with his characterization of the standards work.
>
> However many fine IETF folk took vigorous exception.  So there was some
> community anger with Marshall.
>
> His appearance at the Hawaii IETF was intended to mend the fence.  His
> presentation was stellar in form and content and was thoroughly successful.
>
> A bit of icing happened when I walked by a small group discussing what
> turned out to be final plans for the meeting t-shirt.  I injected the
> suggestion that at the bottom of the shirt's graphic, they should add
> "Many fine lunches and dinner" and they did.  And at the Plenary, they
> made a formal presentation of a shirt to Marshall.
>
> d/
>
> --
> Dave Crocker
>
> dhc at dcrocker.net
> bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
> mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social
> +1.408.329.0791
>
> Volunteer, Silicon Valley Chapter
> Northern California Coastal Region
> Information & Planning Coordinator
> American Red Cross
> dave.crocker2 at redcross.org
>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True