On Tue, 11 Dec 2007, Iain Calder wrote: > > Protocols *can* get pushed aside by challengers that aren't their > descendants. For example, suppose a completely different protocol > called IEP (Internet Email Protocol) arises in the future and, due to > its vastly superior characteristics, becomes the dominant mail transport > system. SMTP would then become historic and IEP would need to be marked > as the current standard. Under these circumstances, an IETF-SMTP label > proves a poor choice. The usefulness of the STD-10 label, however, is > unaffected.
This has already happened in at least two cases. Telnet and rsh have largely been displaced by ssh, and FTP and Gopher by HTTP. I'm not sure that it's useful to have a formal numeric label for remote login, or file transfer, or email, when we have perfectly adequate generic terminology. I'm not even sure the IETF should make a de jure choice between competitors, especially when it's likely to be embarrassingly different from the market's de facto choice. That, too, has already happened, to the OSI protocols. Tony. -- f.a.n.finch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://dotat.at/ LUNDY FASTNET IRISH SEA: SOUTH 5 TO 7. MODERATE OR ROUGH. DRIZZLE. MODERATE OR GOOD. _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
