Subject: AW: AW: OCP transport nomination

From: "Martin Stecher" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 23:51:24 +0200

That is going to become a philosophic discussion about engineering goals ;-)

While my experiences as a software engineer contain always compromises and
never included the theoretical best solution, it still has always been the
goal to create the best under the given circumstances (usually means: 
having limited resources).

Especially creating a protocol means to me to do something more than the
absolute minimum, because others should benefit from it, now and in some
future. And all upcoming users do also have their restrictions.
So forcing those to implement a lot of new code, maybe including support
of other libraries, which are only needed because this group wanted to
have a minimum of work - that's a way I have question marks with whether
OCP can be successful.

But should the consensus be that the WG should just meet the minimum
charted goals, then we should just update ICAP and create ICAP/1.1 which
simply addresses the few open issues.
[Even being the ICAP guy here, this is not my preferred way.]

Martin

> 
> [ speaking as the beep guy, final message... ]
> 
> > > where i interested in seeing this work complete, i would be
> > > leveraging every existing open standards thing i could 
> get my hands
> > > on. i wouldn't care at all about optimality. i would care about
> > > getting the job done before the IESG wises up and figures out that
> > > this working group isn't going to succeed.
> > 
> > Why are you not suggesting that we simply use ICAP/1.0 as OCP, then?
> > ICAP/1.0 (RFC 3507) exists, works, and is open.
>     
> and if it meets all the requirements (including stuff like 
> security) and
> can pass iesg muster, then that's what the working group should use.
>     
>     
> > Personally, I think that it is far better for this group to 
> be forced
> > to close by the wise IESG than to produce OPES protocols 
> that are not
> > much better than the existing ones. It is better to produce nothing
> > [new] than to just further dilute protocol set for OPES-like things.
> > We have to build the "best" OPES protocols to justify this WG
> > existence.
> 
> i have yet to attend an engineering meeting where the goal is the
> "best". the goal is never the "best". the goal is to get things right
> enough, cheap enough, and fast enough to solve enough of the 
> problem and
> then move on.
>     
> i have attended many research meetings, where the goal, as you might
> expect is the "best".
>     
> fundamentally, i have to put the ietf and it's working groups into the
> engineering category. others' mileage may, of course, vary.
>     
> /mtr
>

---

From: Markus Hofmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 19:09:52 -0400

Folks,

new stuff will be worked on if we can expect significant improvements; 
existing solutions will be re-used if they do fit (or possible 
improvements would be minimal). We've to focus on the *most important* 
challenges, there are more than enough to solve.

Think there's consensus that OCP can provide enough benefits to 
justify it over simply extending ICAP. It remains questionable whether 
  a new transport vehicle would provide similar benefits over existing 
solutions. We should be careful of not re-inventing another wheel, if 
the existing wheels already help us moving forward.

Let's get back to the technical discussion and close on the transport 
issue - that's the best way to move forward and to show that the WG is 
making progress.

-Markus