At 11:50 PM 4/10/96 -0700, Jeff Weinstein wrote:

Given that the IETF has no "official" (whatever that means) sanction, what would prevent any other organization from coming in and trying to take over their turf? I saw an article today (sorry, can't remember where) that suggested a brewing fight between IETF and W3C over future HTTP and HTML standards. If someone stands up and says that the IETF is becoming too slow and overcome by bickering (not my opinion, just a what if), and that their new group is better suited to setting standards, who decides who is right, and based on what criteria? It seems that one aspect of anarchy is that anyone could move in and replace "their anarchy" with the "new anarchy".

Just some philosophical pondering late one night...

--Jeff

Why nothing. Even your employer has done a bit of this protocol "forcing". The actual question though is would a successor organization(s) do anything significantly different. The question is can a *government* order protocols. IBM couldn't (after a while). If the government can't order protocols and protocols are created by (rough) mutual consent, I'll be happy and Dorothy won't be. DCF