[Bloat] Letter to CACM?

[Eric Raymond]

Last night I had dinner with Drs. David and Paula Matuszek, two rather
distinguished CS academics who happen to be old and close friends of mine.  
(They have occasionally joked about putting a brass plaque in their living
room, which back in 1996 was the very first place the ideas that became the 
theory of open source were spoken outside of my skull.)

Dave and Paula had just about the reaction you'd expect to my
explanation of bufferbloat - initial bogglement followed by oh-shit
followed by "how did we possibly manage to miss this?"

Elapsed time from boggle to full comprehension was less than 5
minutes. This is encouraging. Yes, they're exceptionally bright, and
yes, I'm exceptionally capable at doing this kind of exposition; still,
it's a good sign that they got it so fast.

They had a useful suggestion.  They think we ought to ship the overview
as a letter to CACM.  "Everybody gets that," they pointed out.

Yeah, I can see it.  Getty, J., Raymond, E.S., Taht, D.  "Packet Loss
Considered Helpful"  OK, I kid about the title.

I'd have to strip out some of the babytalk about road networks, but I
could do that in a hot minute.  Once we get the overview content final.

Should I put this shipping to CACM my to-do list for when the overview
is done?  Jim, especially looking for your judgment; you'd be the
obvious designee for lead author even if the alphabetical order didn't
fall that way.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>