Re: A philosophical question about large directory structures

At 10:00 23.06.99 -0400, Leslie Daigle wrote:

> > Who do we expect to pay?
> > And why will they?
>
>I think that, whenever we (IETF) delve into the question of "who will
>pay", we've wandered out of our realm of effectiveness.
>
>I interpret your question as:  there is a general feeling that
>a unified directory service would be a Very Useful Thing, and
>as finding a funding model seems to be the impediment, let's talk about
>the funding model.
>
>The problem is that protocols don't have funding models, services
>do.  The IETF doesn't do services (much), it does protocols.  So,
>I question what can be usefully discussed on this front before
>a seemingly-useful service comes into existence (more opinions on
>that, elsewhere).

[searching for a nice-looking soapbox to stand on for a short rant]

actually, I disagree about the role of the IETF community.
I think the ultimate basic drive of the IETF *community* is "keep the
Internet going".

The IETF *organization* has redefined itself into a purely standards-making
body, partly because of a perception that standards are terribly important
to get right, and that trying to make decisions about "who runs what" tends 
to make standards-making *far* less effective.

Still, the people around at IETFs are very often the people who know what's
*really* going on - if we manage to agree that something needs doing, and 
some of us think that we've found a way worth trying - it just may get tried.

My initial question was triggered partly by problems here in Norway
(I can't seem to find the rest of that piece of capital I need), but
the response I got seems to have woken this group out of its doze - and
I regard that as a *good* thing.
The first step in finding a solution is discovering that we need one.

See you in Oslo!

                        Harald

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
[email protected]