[ntp:hackers] Daughter of RFC-2030

David L. Mills mills at udel.edu
Mon Aug 18 20:21:32 PDT 2003


Dean,

That's an interesting suggestion; however, there is a lot of history in
the RFC process (I didn't say IETF) for NTP and the community
expectations are probably that specifications belong in that publishing
process. My personal problem with the process is the document format
requirements, which are charitably in the dark ages. I and most
everybody can make a good looking paper image in PDF which has every bit
the good attributes of the Postel ASCII format. But, I don't have the
resources, interest or time to do that for every round of submission.

I have some experience with the ITU-T and ANSI committees. I'm not too
ready to condemn the IETF just yet.

Dave

Dean Anderson wrote:
> 
> You aren't the only one critical of the IETF. Of all the standards bodies
> been involved with, or worked for, is by far and away the sloppiest.
> 
> However, it is often said that the nicest thing about standards (and its
> true of standards bodies, too), is that there are so many of them.
> 
> Perhaps you might consider publishing a new standard through a different
> standards body.  I can perhaps help with my contacts at The Open Group, if
> you want to consider exploring alternatives to the IETF.  The Open Group
> (as you might be aware) oversees standards for things like XPG, SQL, X
> Window System, DCE, etc. I'm not sure if they would consider NTP out of
> their scope, but I could probably help with getting in touch with the
> right people to find out.
> 
>                 --Dean
> 
> On Sun, 17 Aug 2003, David L. Mills wrote:
> 
> > Frankly, I find the IETF publishing process disgusting, but my opinions
> > have been strongly expressed to the RFC editors and ignored since
> > RFC-1305 over ten years ago.



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