[ih] "The Great Debate"

[John Day]

Yep, a common occurrence in both IETF and ISO meetings. There were also a lot of late nights and loud discussions in both as people tried to work out differences. Although, the IETF didn’t have to deal with the PTT-types, who simply didn’t get it.  ;-)



> On Apr 29, 2026, at 22:44, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> What I remember about "many fine lunches and dinners" is that at the Stockholm
> IETF meeting in July 1995, the IAB held a very fine working** dinner in a private
> room at a ground-floor restaurant near the convention centre. What we hadn't
> realised was that we were very visible, as we ate and drank, for everyone walking
> between the meeting venue and the various hotels. We heard a lot of remarks
> about our conspicuous fine dinner the next day. The Open Book was well known
> at the time, and the fine lunches and dinners had made into the Tao of the IETF
> (RFC1391) - but misquoted, because the original context was to distinguish
> Doers from Goers. I will leave Geoff to explain that if he wants to.
> 
> ** I swear we were working hard throughout the meal.
> 
> Regards/Ngā mihi
>   Brian Carpenter
> 
> On 30-Apr-26 13:16, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via Internet-history wrote:
>> 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
>>> 
>>> 
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