The point isn't to get IETF to "sign it off". The idea is to get some extensive peer review from a wider audience, so that you don't end up with a widely-used

The point isn't to get IETF to "sign it off". The idea is to get some extensive peer review from a wider audience, so that you don't end up with a widely-used protocol that's difficult to implement, missing important features, or both. A single vendor working in a vacuum is how we end up with horrible kludges like the Public Suffix List. http://publicsuffix.org/ http://publicsuffix.org/ A lot of the failed IETF standards are ones where the IETF was constrained to trying to fix an already-deployed protocol after the fact.