From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 23:43:15 -0400

Not to single out anyone in particular, but in response to the
Nth message of the form:

> We support the release of this document as an Informational RFC.

As far as I'm concerned, absent technical justification, expressions
of support (from this or any other organization) aren't much help,
and they indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of IETF.

Furthermore, to an organization like IETF which attempts to make sound
technical decisions based on the opinions of technical experts, 
an expression of support from an organization is at best, uh, difficult 
to evaluate.    It is too easy for an organization to state its 
*public position* rather than the technical opinion of the experts
in its employ.  And we'd far rather the experts speak for themselves, 
because experience suggests that they're more likely to be honest that way.  

At any rate, IETF doesn't make decisions based on organizations' 
public  positions, it makes decisions based on its participants' 
technical opinions.  And IETF's participants are human beings, 
nor organizations.

Now if any of these organizations employ engineers with expertise
in these areas, who can give us good arguments as to why this
proposal isn't a problem, we'd like to hear them.  But we hope that 
they will speak freely and give us their best technical assessment, 
rather than merely repeating the public positions of their companies.

Keith Moore