APIs and the IETF (RE: Ecosystems cost of additional specs)

--On 2. september 2005 15:45 -0700 Michael Krause <[email protected]> wrote:

> Somewhat an aside, but it is ironic that standard APIs are often ignored
> / deemed "crap" by some even if many systems can benefit from them yet
> this spec which is likely to be implemented by a single OS and used only
> in perhaps a subset of deployments is deemed worthy. Apologies for the
> tangent.

the IETF tradition is to not do APIs, mostly for 2 reasons:

- traditionally, the IETF has not had competence in them
- they can detract from the focus on "what's going to go on the wire"

The scary examples (to IETF-interoperability-heads) of non-IETF specs 
include MPI, which specified an API and *not* a wire protocol - resulting 
in portable programs, but not interoperability between different 
implementations. May have been a rational decision in its context, but 
definitely different to how IETFers think about specs.

A scary example of IETF getting it wrong (to my mind) is GSS-API, which 
specifies a protocol by specifying procedure calls - getting the protocol 
right is then QUITE not-easy....

I haven't heard them called "crap" in the IETF, but I've definitely heard 
them called "second to the protocols" and "please, let someone else worry 
about it".

                              Harald

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