IPP Mail Archive: RE: IPP> Consensus on sending our drafts to the IESG

RE: IPP> Consensus on sending our drafts to the IESG

papowell@astart.com
Thu, 12 Feb 1998 13:57:09 -0800 (PST)

> From ipp-owner@pwg.org Sun Feb 8 13:27:12 1998
> From: Paul Moore <paulmo@microsoft.com>
> To: "'Jay Martin'" <jkm@underscore.com>
> Cc: ipp@pwg.org
> Subject: RE: IPP> Consensus on sending our drafts to the IESG
> Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 12:48:42 -0800
>
> The problem is that nobody wants to do the other thing!
>
> I saw two problems with two , potentially different, soultions (hence my
> double vote). I rolled with what I saw as the simple solution (HTTP -
> interesting that you percieve them the opposite way round) and proposed
> something called SIMPLE web printing based on what we were building - that
> just did job submission. That eventually evolved into what we have today.
>
> Now we move on to address the issues that were lurking in the background -
> printer discovery, feature dicsovery , configuration discovery, managment,
> notification, flow control, peer queuing,.... (things for s/w to printer
> interface) and billing, quotas, access control, server managemnt, job
> redirection, ... (things for client to print subsystem interface).
> I just want to get down and build good stuff for users - I am trying to

.... large section deleted for brevity - read the original posting please

I agree with almost all of these comments, from BOTH sides. I also
went along with what I saw, which after some careful analysis I
decided was a less than perfect methodology, in order to foster
group or general concensus.

I have reluctantly come to the position that the development of
this standard and protocol has been driven more by 'Corporate
Politics' and 'Having an Industry Concensus' than by 'Technical
Requirements'.

Now before you think that this is a NEGATIVE statement, I want to clearly
indicate that I am ALL FOR 'Having an Industry Concensus' and that
if it takes 'Corporate Politics' to reach this, I am all for it.

I may not like the fact that we have an elephant with the appearance
of a camel (apologies to PERL fans), but at least we have something
that stands a chance of becoming an industry wide standard, and appears
to be at least as functional as the old LPR (RFC1179) protocol,
and compatible with gatewaying to it.

Which is really all that I was interested in :-)

Patrick ("
There is industry agreement, a standard, and a working prototype.
Of course we don't use it, cause we didn't invent it and can't
license it or patent it.
") Powell

P.S. - any resemblance to the above statement and proprietary
network protocols versus using TCP/IP is entirely coincidental, irrelevant,
immaterial, and highly controversial. :-)