Network Working Group H. Alvestrand Internet-Draft Cisco Systems Expires: August 8, 2004 February 8, 2004 A mission statement for the IETF draft-alvestrand-ietf-mission-00 Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http:// www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on August 8, 2004. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This memo gives a mission statement for the IETF, tries to define the terms used in the statement sufficiently to make the mission statement understandable and useful, argues why the IETF needs a mission statement, and tries to capture some of the debate that led to this point. The appendix giving the debate is intended to be deleted when the RFC is published; it is only given here as a reference and a thank-you note. Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 1] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 1. Mission statement The goal of the IETF is to make the Internet work. The mission of the IETF is to produce high quality, relevant technical and engineering documents that influence the way people design, use and manage the Internet in such a way as to make the Internet work better. These documents include protocol standards, best current practices and informational documents of various kinds. The IETF will pursue this mission in adherence to the following cardinal principles: Open process - that any interested participant can in fact participate in the work, know what is being decided, and make his or her voice heard on the issue. Part of this principle is our commitment to making our documents, our WG mailing lists, our attendance lists and our meeting minutes publicly available on the Net. Technical competence - that the issues on which the IETF produces its documents are issues where the IETF has the competence needed to speak to them, and that the IETF is willing to listen to technically competent input from any source. Technical competence also means that we expect IETF output to be designed to sound network engineering principles - this is also often referred to as "engineering quality". Volunteer Core - that our members and our leadership are people who come to the IETF because they want to work for the IETF's purposes. Rough consensus and running code - We make standards based on the combined engineering judgement of our participants and our real- world experience in implementing and deploying our specifications. Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 2] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 2. Definition of terms Misson: What an organization sets out to do. This is in contrast to its goal (which is what it hopes to achieve by fulfilling its mission), and to its activities (which is what specific actions it takes to achieve its mission). The Internet: A large, heterogenous collection of interconnected systems that can be used for communication of many different types between any interested parties connected to it. The term includes both the "core Internet" (ISP networks) and "edge Internet" (corporate and private networks). The IETF community wants the Internet to succeed because we believe that the existence of the Internet, and its influence on economics, communication and education, will help us to build a better human society. Standard: As used here, the term describes a specification of a protocol, system behaviour or procedure that has an unique identifier, and where the IETF has agreed that "if you want to do this thing, this is the description of how to do it". It does not imply any attempt by the IETF to mandate its use, or any attempt to police its usage - only that "if you say that you are doing this according to this standard, do it this way". The benefit of a standard to the Internet is in interoperability - that multiple products implementing a standard are able to work together in order to deliver valuable functions to the Internet's users. Participants: The fundamental unit of the IETF organization and the IETF's work. The IETF has found that the process works best when focused around people, rather than around organizations, companies, governments or interest groups. That is not to say that these other entities are uninteresting - but they are not what constitutes the IETF. Quality: In this context, the ability to express ideas with enough clarity that they can be understood in the same way by all people building systems to conform to them, and the ability (and willingness) to describe the properties of the system well enough to understand important consequences of its design, and to ensure that those consequences are beneficial to the Internet as a whole. It also means that the specifications are designed with adherence to sound network engineering principles, so that use for its intended purpose is likely to be effective and not harmful to the Internet as a whole. Relevant: In this context, useful to some group of people who have to Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 3] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 make decisions that affect the Internet, including, but not limited to, hardware and software implementors, network builders, network operators and users of the Internet. Note that it does not mean "correct" or "positive" - a report of an experiment that failed, or a specification that clearly says why you should not use it in a given situation, can be highly relevant - for deciding what NOT to do. A part of being relevant is being timely - very often, documents delivered a year after core decisions have been taken are far less useful than documents that are available to the decision-makers at decision time. Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 4] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 3. The need for a mission statement The IETF has to make decisions. And in some cases, people acting on behalf of the IETF have to make decisions without consulting the entire IETF first. There are many reasons for this, including the near-impossibility of getting an informed consensus opinion on a complex subject out of a community of several thousand people in reasonable time. Having a defined mission is one of the steps we can take in order to evaluate alternatives: Does this help or hinder the mission, or is it orthogonal to it? If there are limited resources, are there things that they could be invested in that help the mission better? (Another step is to choose leaders that we trust to exercise their good judgment and do the right thing. But we're already trying to do that.) Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 5] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 4. Issues with scoping the IETF's mission 4.1 The scope of the Internet A very difficult issue in discussing the IETF's mission has been the scope of the term "for the Internet". The Internet is used for many things, many of which the IETF community has neither interest nor competence in making standards for. The Internet isn't value-neutral, and neither is the IETF. We want the Internet to be useful for communities that share our commitment to openness and fairness. We embrace technical concepts such as decentralized control, edge-user empowerment and sharing of resources, because those concepts resonate with the core values of the IETF community. These concepts have little to do with the technology that's possible, and much to do with the technology that we choose to create. At the same time, it is clear that many of the IETF-defined technologies are useful not only for the Internet, but also for networks that have no direct relation to the Internet itself. In attempting to resolve this question, perhaps the fairest balance is struck by this formulation: "protocols and practices for which secure and scalable implementations are expected to have wide deployment and interoperation on the Internet, or to form part of the infrastructure of the Internet." In addition to this constraint, we are also constrained by the principle of competence: Where we do not have, and cannot gather, the competence needed to make technically sound standards, we should not attempt to take the leadership. 4.2 The balance between research, invention and adoption The IETF has traditionally been a community for both experimentation with things that are not fully understood, standardization of protocols for which some understanding has been reached, and publication of (and refinement of) protocols originally specified outside the IETF process. All of these activities have in common that they produce documents - but the documents should be judged to very different criteria when the time to publish comes around, and it's not uncommon to see people confused about what documents are in which category. In deciding whether or not these activities should be done within the IETF, one should not chiefly look at the type of activity, but the Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 6] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 potential benefit to the Internet - an experiment that yields information about the fact that an approach is not viable might be as worthy of publication as a standard that is technically competent, but only useful in a few special cases. For research of an essentially unbounded nature, with unknown probability of success, it may be more relevant to charter a research group than a standards group. For activities with a bounded scope - such as specifying several alternative protocols to the point where experiments can identify the better one for standardization - the IETF's working group mechanism may be an appropriate tool. 4.3 The balance between mission and procedures The mission is intended to state what the IETF is trying to achieve. There are many methods that can be chosen to achieve these outcomes - for instance, the appeals procedure is defined so that we can detect cases where our fundamental principles of technical competence and open process has been violated; it is not itself a fundamental value. Similarly, the question of what body in the IETF declares that a document is ready for publication is entirely outside the mission statement; we can imagine changing that without in any way impacting what the IETF mission is - even though it may significantly impact the ability to achieve that mission. Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 7] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 5. Security considerations Considering security is one of the core principles of sound network engineering for the Internet. Apart from that, it's not relevant to this memo. Author's Address Harald Tveit Alvestrand Cisco Systems Weidemanns vei 27 Trondheim 7043 NO EMail: harald@alvestrand.no Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 8] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 Appendix A. From the debate: Other mission statements proposed This appendix is intended to be removed when (if) this document is published as an RFC. It is intended to aid the memory of those engaging in discussion about it, and avoid repetition of previous discussion and proposals of alternatives. These other mission statements have formed a critical part of the process leading to the current proposal, and thanks should be extended to their formulators. A.1 The Tao of IETF RFC 3160, the Tao of IETF (latest version) says (section 1): The Internet Engineering Task Force is a loosely self-organized group of people who contribute to the engineering and evolution of Internet technologies. It is the principal body engaged in the development of new Internet standard specifications. The IETF is unusual in that it exists as a collection of happenings, but is not a corporation and has no board of directors, no members, and no dues. Its mission includes: Identifying, and proposing solutions to, pressing operational and technical problems in the Internet; Specifying the development or usage of protocols and the near-term architecture to solve such technical problems for the Internet; Making recommendations to the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) regarding the standardization of protocols and protocol usage in the Internet; Facilitating technology transfer from the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) to the wider Internet community; and Providing a forum for the exchange of information within the Internet community between vendors, users, researchers, agency contractors, and network managers. The IETF meeting is not a conference, although there are technical presentations. The IETF is not a traditional standards organization, although many specifications are produced that become standards. The IETF is made up of volunteers, many of whom meet three times a year to fulfill the IETF mission. There is no membership in the IETF. Anyone may register for and attend any meeting. The closest thing there is to being an IETF member is being on the IETF or Working Group mailing lists (see Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 9] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 Section 1.3). This is where the best information about current IETF activities and focus can be found. Of course, no organization can be as successful as the IETF is without having some sort of structure. In the IETF's case, that structure is provided by other organizations, as described in BCP 11, "The Organizations Involved in the IETF Standards Process." If you participate in the IETF and only read one BCP, this is the one you should read. Commentary: This is a long section. It also is quite unclear in the scope of the term "IETF". And it does not provide any hint of which goals are primary and which are secondary. But it does describe quite accurately many aspects of the current IETF. A.2 Harald Alvestrand from the London IESG The purpose of the IETF is to create high quality, relevant standards for the Internet Commentary: This was formulated at an IESG meeting held in conjunction with the IETF meeting. There is more text explaining more background - see http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/iesg/purpose.php A.3 Ted Hardie to the IESG The IETF is a community of active participants dedicated to producing timely, high quality engineering work that describes protocols and practices for which secure and scalable implementations are expected to have wide deployment and interoperation on or to form part of the infrastructure of the Internet. Commentary: This came out of a meeting of a small group that was convened by the IETF Chair in September 2003 to do a brainstorm on what we could do to "make the IETF work better". A.4 IESG November The IETF's mission has historically been embedded in a shared understanding that making engineering choices based on the long term interest of the Internet as a whole produces better long-term results for each participant than making choices based on short term considerations, because the value of those advantages is ultimately derived from the health of the whole. The long term interest of the Internet includes the premise that "the Internet is for everyone". Two years ago, the IESG felt that making the mission of the IETF more explicit was needed. The following terse statement has since been Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 10] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 promulgated, first by IESG members and then by others: "The purpose of the IETF is to create high quality, relevant, and timely standards for the Internet." Note that this clearly positions the IETF primarily as a standards development organization. There are other activities in the IETF; but if the IETF does not do its core mission, all else will quickly fade. This is intended to be an ordered list of characteristics. Timely standards of low quality or that are irrelevant will not serve the Internet's or the IETF's needs. This leaves open the very interesting and difficult questions of how to measure quality, relevance, and timeliness. The IETF has identified interoperability, security, and scalability as essential, but without attaching measurements to those characteristics. It is important that this is "For the Internet," and does not include everything that happens to use IP. IP is being used in a myriad of real-world applications, such as controlling street lights, but the IETF does not standardize those applications. Commentary: This was part of an "IETF social contract" proposed by the IESG to the IETF list on October 14, 2003. It engendered quite a bit of discussion, with perhaps the most heated part being the definition of "For the Internet". A.5 Fred Baker The Internet Engineering Task Force provides a forum for the discussion and development of white papers and specifications for the engineering issues of the Internet. This discussion builds on hard lessons learned in research and operational environments, and necessarily includes speakers from those communities. Vendors offer wisdom on what can be built and made to work in their products, and may bring customer or market issues whose owners cannot or will not bring themselves. The intended goal is well characterized as 'community memory' - written observations and wisdom as well as protocols and operational procedures defined - to enable the datagram internet to scalably deliver relevant services in transit and edge networks." This was sent to the IETF list as part of a discussion on the IETF mission on Jan 29, 2004. Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 11] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 A.6 Dean Anderson IETF is a technical protocol standards organization. Its principal goals are: To create open, technical standards that will be useful to and adopted by the world internet communtity and the public at large. To identify current and emerging protocol requirements, and share best practices. To facliitate the participation of all affected and interested parties and develop consensus. To solicit the input of a diverse group of interests and participants in the formation of protocol standards. To provide a fair and open process whereby any party that believes it has been treated unfairly has the right to appeal. To work with suppliers, consortia, and other standards bodies to develop consensus and facilitate interoperability. Comment: Sent to the IETF list on February 4, 2004. Had some discussion on the "appeal" point - whether "party" was persons or companies, and whether appeals belonged in a mission statement. Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 12] Internet-Draft A mission statement for the IETF February 2004 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. 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Acknowledgement Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Alvestrand Expires August 8, 2004 [Page 13]