Today, the IETF Turns 25

FranckMartin writes "Little known to the general public, the Internet Engineering Task Force celebrates its 25th birthday on the 16th of January. DNSSEC, IDN, SIP, IPv6, HTTP, MPLS ... all acronyms that were codified at the IETF. But little known, one can argue the IETF does not exist; it just happens that people meet 3 times a year in some hotel around the world and are on mailing lists in between. The openness of the IETF and its structure has inspired the way ICANN is run, as well as the way the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has been open to the civil society."

Comments

Re:IETF doesn't exist

[Tacvek]

The IETF exists in the same way that Debian Project exists, as an unregistered association of individuals, who operate under specific rules created by consensus. However, not being a legal entity in and of themselves, they each have umbrella organizations, namely Software in the Public Interest and the Internet Society, respectively. Both umbrella organizations encompass multiple other proects in addition to Debian and IETF.

The only notable difference is that while the Debian Project has clearly defined members (the Debian Developers), the IETF does not. On the other hand Debian relies heavily on individuals who are not members, making even this distinction smaller than it may seem.