Dear Brian and all,
This mail of Harald Alvestrand positively concludes a long, difficult
and boring effort of mine started at the WG-IDNA. I apologise to all
for the inconveniences it created all over these years. My Franglish
and my lack of talents left me with a tested method: the style you
suffered, to pass ideas to who is interested or concerned; home work
to demonstrate and implement them. It avoids conflicts and obtains
results, at the cost of some ad-hominems instead of major conflicts
(like on the spam issue). The Draft has considerably improved since I
started partly opposing it in December.
Harald Alvestrand expressed several times that the IETF is neither
interested nor competent in multilingualism, an area which is
necessarily, by its complexity, the size of its financial figures and
the involved industrial, political and cultural interests, the engine
of the development of the future Internet (RFC 3869 unfortunately did
not considered). So, he managed or sponsored himself that policy with
real talent. I was first confronted to that IETF situation through
the WG-IDNA: it shown me the rightness of his evaluation.
There was two options: (a) an educational effort and an appropriate
documentation of the Internet standard process in that area, (b) a
more appropriate structure to carry and pay for that effort. I choose
(a) and Harald choose (b). A conflict was unavoidable and I
documented it long ago in quasi exact terms. But I had to prove it
and expose it, so we could all together build on it. It was not an
easy task. It is now done.
Who manages a root registry, manages all what this registry and its
related registries register (a good example is ICANN). There is an
on-going major R&D effort to mesh registries (ISO 11179) where the
IETF should be the leader for network aspects. This confront us to
the question the WG-ltru Draft actually rises. Does the IAB/IETF want:
- to give the _exclusive_ control of the Multilingual Internet to
ietf-languages(_at_)alvestrand(_dot_)no, through the IANA langtags core registry?
- to consider multilingualism as an important issue and address it by
their own, for example through a dedicated area or a specialised WG,
with all the delays and balkanisation risks this would imply in the
meanwhile (cf. the IDN experience)?
- to build on existing experiences (Draft, URI-tags as an initial
vehicle?), to protect innovation and avoid the conflicts either
propositions above will rise?
The attitude of exclusion of Harald (even calling on Napoleon and
timely delaying action) and the funny comment of Peter Constable,
only translate the ( _correct_ in their (de)centralised perspective)
technical need of an exclusive of the IANA langtags core registry,.
My "negative" contributions permitted this need to be respected: they
precisely defined (as a QA against my propositions) the area of
application of the RFC 3066bis Draft through its ABNF. But the second
and third choices involve the capacity for users communities to
define their own language and cultural identification systems: this
means a distributed approach (already accepted for private use).
The real question the IESG is therefore now to respond is: will the
Internet of the immediate future be only decentalised and under a
designated, support based, leadership (with which
operational:financial warranties?), will it increase its risk of
balkanisation? or should it transition smoothly from a decentralised
towards a distributed system of references and innovative usage
architecture, in tune with the rest of the digital convergence?
This is not an easy question.
I thank all those, surprisingly nice and numerous considering the
issue and my boring mails, who sent me supportive and friendly mails.
My other positive surprise was that - except on the public lists and
through anonymous phone calls - I was never attacked. I want to
specially thank Michael Everson for the work he does - even if it
happened we had to directly oppose. If I hurt someone it was not intended.
My sadness is the very very small number of non-English mother tongue
participants: the alternative SDO Harald found is no really better in
that area. When addressing multilingualism, this should be very
concerning for us all.
I hope this closes my contributions on the Draft issue.
I support the Draft if it includes the support of URI-tags through
the "0-" singleton.
I would otherwise initiate or support appeals to the IETF and IAB.
jfc
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