mark nottingham

Standards

There Are No Standards Police

Wednesday, 13 March 2024

It happens fairly often. Someone brings a proposal to a technical standards body like the IETF and expects that just because it becomes an RFC, people will adopt it. Or they’ll come across a requirement in an RFC and expect it to be enforced, perhaps with some kind of punishment. Or they’ll get angry that people don’t pay attention to an existing standard and do their own thing. This is so common that there’s a ready response widely used by IETF people in these situations:

RFC 9518 - What Can Internet Standards Do About Centralisation?

Tuesday, 19 December 2023

RFC 9518: Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards has been published, after more than two years of review, discussion, and revision.

Technical Standards Bodies are Regulators

Wednesday, 1 November 2023

There are lots of ways to view what Internet standards bodies like the IETF and W3C do. They are horizontal agreements between competitors as well as mission-driven public-good charities. One might believe they’re the homes of innovation that brought us the Internet and the Web, or that they’re boring, ineffective and slow committee talking shops. Some see them as vibrant, diverse communities, while others believe they’re completely dominated by big tech.

How the Next Layer of the Internet is Going to be Standardised

Monday, 21 June 2021

A big change in how the Internet is defined - and who defines it - is underway.

RFC 8890 - The Internet is for End Users

Friday, 28 August 2020

The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) has published RFC8890, The Internet is for End Users, arguing that the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) should ground its decisions in what’s good for people who use the Internet, and that it should take positive steps to achieve that.

On RFC8674, the safe preference for HTTP

Thursday, 5 December 2019

It’s become common for Web sites – particularly those that host third-party or user-generated content – to make a “safe” mode available, where content that might be objectionable is hidden. For example, a parent who wants to steer their child away from the rougher corners of the Internet might go to their search engine and put it in “safe” mode.

How to Read an RFC

Tuesday, 31 July 2018

For better or worse, Requests for Comments (RFCs) are how we specify many protocols on the Internet. These documents are alternatively treated as holy texts by developers who parse them for hidden meanings, then shunned as irrelevant because they can’t be understood. This often leads to frustration and – more significantly – interoperability and security issues.

Alternative Services

Wednesday, 9 March 2016

The IESG has approved “HTTP Alternative Services” for publication as a Proposed Standard.

Snowden Meets the IETF

Monday, 20 July 2015

Last night, we had a screening of CITIZENFOUR at the IETF meeting in Prague, and about 170 people showed up to see the movie about Edward Snowden’s relevations — information that led the IETF to declare such pervasive monitoring as an attack on the Internet itself.

Improving Captive Portals

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Yesterday at IETF92 in Dallas, we had a “Bar BoF” (i.e., informal meeting) about improving the behaviour and handling of Captive Portals — those login pages that you have to click through to get onto networks in hotels, airports, and many other places.

Why Intermediation is Important

Saturday, 27 December 2014

A few months ago I went to the Internet Governance Forum, looking to understand more about the IGF and its attendees. One of the things I learned there was a different definition of “intermediary” — one that I think the standards community should pay close attention to.

Strengthening HTTP: A Personal View

Saturday, 4 January 2014

Recently, one of the hottest topics in the Internet protocol community has been whether the newest version of the Web’s protocol, HTTP/2, will require, encourage or indeed say anything about the use of encryption in response to the pervasive monitoring attacks revealed to the world by Edward Snowden.

A Few Thoughts about PRISM

Friday, 21 June 2013

The NSA PRISM story broke while I was on the road; last week I was in Tokyo for W3C meetings, moving to San Francisco for a HTTP meeting and Velocity.

Distributed Hungarian Notation doesn't Work

Wednesday, 24 August 2011

It used to be that when you registered a media type, a URI scheme, a HTTP header or another protocol element on the Internet, it was an opaque string that was a unique identifier, nothing more.

Come to the Stockholm IETF!

Friday, 3 July 2009

The Stockholm IETF meeting is shaping up to be an interesting one (and not just because it’s in such a beautiful city).

The FSF, IETF and Use Patents

Tuesday, 24 February 2009

Over the past few weeks the Free Software Foundation has had its knickers in a twist about TLS authentication — specifically, its patent encumbrance;

Moving the Goalposts: “Use” Patents and Standards

Wednesday, 2 April 2008

It’s become quite fashionable for large IT shops to give blanket Royalty-Free licenses for implementation of “core” technologies, such as XML, Web Services and Atom. I’ll refrain from linking to any of them, as the purpose of this post* is not to pick on any single one**.

Some Questions for Software Vendors

Wednesday, 13 September 2006

Everyone seems to be gushing about Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise. While any headway is good in the horrible landscape that is Intellectual Property, my initial reaction is that it — like most such vendor promises — is too little, too late.

Transformational Standards

Friday, 22 July 2005

Don Box (whose blog doesn’t seem to be taking comments any more, so I’ll do it over here) points out some very cool technology he’s using, Microsoft’s Office Communicator. Sounds very slick, I’m jealous (with my old tech phone line and last year’s GSM mobile)!

Extensibility and Interoperability

Saturday, 3 January 2004

In his blog, Sean McGrath wonders about two potentially competing faces of standards; extensibility and interoperability.

Registering Media Types

Saturday, 23 August 2003

I’ve had a fairly large and annoying bee in my bonnet for the past few months, regarding media type registration. It started buzzing when I tried (and failed) to register a media type for RSS, and has continued to grow as I attempt to do the same for SOAP, on behalf of the XML Protocol Working Group.

Economics of standards

Sunday, 22 June 2003

Looks like a good to-read list: John Beatty: Economics of Standards

While we're talking about standards...

Wednesday, 28 May 2003

I agree with just about everything that Jim Waldo says here (at least for protocol standards). Well said!

IETF Transparency

Sunday, 10 November 2002

Finally, the IESG puts its money where its mouth is; this tool allows you to see the status and individual AD’s comments about a particular I-D. It’s only a start, but at least you have some idea of what’s going on, instead of being left out in the cold.