g'day,
Several folks have commented on the part of Dave's message
referring to Karl's lawsuit but I didn't see any response to
his opening remarks, which I think are actually more
relevant for this list.
Dave Crocker wrote:
At 04:38 AM 8/1/2002 -0400, Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu wrote:
A case could be made that if ICANN was even *pretending* to serve the public
interest, they could at least enter into a *discussion* with the ORSC people.
One of the tests of an idea that is required in the IETF pertains to
scaling. So, please apply your thought to the general case. It means that
ICANN would be legitimizing anyone and everyone who chooses to start an
independent activity. This is a very bad idea for the stability of the DNS.
It makes far more sense for ICANN to literally ignore independent
activities. And that is exactly what ICANN has done. To ignore them means
that ICANN does not pay any attention at all to those other
activities. This includes ICANN treating the IANA/ICANN name space as
self-contained, as in fact it is. Hence, the only "collisions" that ICANN
should pay attention to are collisions within the IANA/ICANN DNS.
Without passing judgement on the quality of any single
request for interaction I can't see how, given the mandate
that ICANN claims for itself, it can be argued that ICANN
can or should ignore requests for interaction from folks not
already under the tent.
From their website:
"ICANN has been recognized by the U.S. and other governments
as the global consensus entity to coordinate the technical
management of the Internet's domain name system,..."
Are you actually saying that if someone comes up with a
relevant idea outside the scope of ICANN's current efforts
they can and should ignore it? By this train logic you could
argue that the IETF should also "literally ignore
independent activities". Work with the ITU? Nah, that might
harm the Internet. Work with W3C? Nope, too destabilizing to
what's already in place for HTTP. You seem to be arguing
that because we can assume that at least some of those
requests for interaction are going to be a waste of time, we
need to ignore them all...
Independent activities are, after all, independent. They choose to work
without coordinating with ICANN and they are free to do that. (Contrary to
Stef's interpretation, my comments are about registries and root
administrators, not about users.)
What makes no sense at all is for these folks to act independently and then
make a post hoc claim that ICANN is somehow obligated to coordinate with
them. Apply hour logic equally. Why were these folk not, themselves,
obligated to first do pre hoc coordination with ICANN?
This reasoning leads to a classic "Catch-22". You want to do
something not relevant to a large enough portion of the
community, or for which benefits are not yet visible or
quantifiable, so you can't get sign-on and traction within
the larger umbrella organization. But if you elect to work
independently, you will then be barred from "returning to
the fold", because you aren't already part of the ICANN
sphere of influence before you started. Sounds like a recipe
for stagnation and a guarantee that such an organization
becomes an impediment to innovation, if you ask me...
In contrast, folks come to the IETF with work at various
stages of completion seeking interactions. In some cases it
makes sense to say "sorry, not relevant or worth the effort
on our part" but in some cases interaction takes place, even
if the work was begun, or even completed, completely outside
the scope of the IETF. What should matter is the relevance
of the work to the organization's mandate, and the impact
such work might have compared to other that might get done.
You certainly can't assume a priori that you will never
interact with the rest of the world just because they didn't
get started under your particular umbrella because you can't
assume any organization or single group of people have a
lock on good ideas. In the case of ICANN, which specifically
has a mandate to be a coordinating and consensus-building
body, I find your assertion that it should *never* attempt
coordination with anyone not already inside the tent to be a
recipte for harm, to say the least, since it would encourage
schisms and prevent access to good ideas that might be
germinated outside your own particular hothouse.
Note, I don't suggest that you need to guarantee a
favourable reception to every person who attempts to crawl
under the tent, but to claim that it might be appropriate to
ban *any* interactions with outsiders is breathtaking in its
hubris. I do hope I'm missing something here, Dave...
- peterd
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Deutsch pdeutsch(_at_)gydig(_dot_)com
Gydig Software
"Mr. Fawlty! Me no want to work here any more!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------