Behalf Of JFC (Jefsey) Morfin
This is why I suggest the real danger for the IETF is the
collusion of
large organisations through external consortia to get a
market dominance
through de facto excluding IETF standardisation and IANA
registry control.
And this is why I suggest the best way to address it is
simply to ask for
the truth, the whole truth.
The problem with this approach is that it becomes self-defeating. The
work of the IETF gets clogged up by individuals whose sole objective is
to block what they see as the encroachments of evil corporations at all
costs. Even if they can't see the evil globalization scheme immediately
they will block progress anyway just in case. The result is that
corporations that want to get work done either go to other forums or
craft proposals that are so narrowly drafted that they amount to a
rubber stamp.
Certainly there are bizare corporations attempting to achieve some sort
of stranglehold. Anyone remember digital convergence and the CueCat?
That type of behavior tends to come from market entrants rather than
established companies. Once you have a stake in the open Internet the
probability of success in a closed 'walled garden' scheme isn't high
enough to be interesting.
Furthermore the people working for those corporations tend to consider
themselves advocates for and responsible to their customers and their
customer's customers at least as much if not more than their
shareholders.
Sit at the back of the plenary sessions. Watch the number of people
opening up their laptop and starting a telnet session. Less than 5% of
the billion plus Internet users interact with their machine in that way.
The IETF membership is totally unrepresentative of the billion plus
Internet users. Worse still the prevaling attitude is of the 'anyone can
become like us only not quite so skilled' type. Most people don't want
to have to become computer experts.
The IETF does not have a veto over the development of the Internet.
There are plenty of standards organizations to choose from. Nor for that
matter does IANA. All IANA is is a voluntary arrangement that exists
because people choose to recognize it. There is in practice nothing to
stop individuals simply declaring that they will use a particular code
point.
As a thought experiment consider what happens if someone decides they
want the DNS RR 88 and just goes and uses it. If they succeed and their
standard is used nobody else is going to accept issue of RR #88. And
that is all anyone needs from IANA.
This total lack of control is actually not such a bad thing. It means
that if the International 'Internet Governance' cabal that wants to
capture the IANA were to succeed the success it would not matter very
much.
This is the only way to obtain open, scalable and
uniform standards.
Are these the right goals?
Surely meeting the needs of the users should come somewhere in the list.
Uniformity in standards can be a good thing. But there are also
disadvantages to insisting on 'consistency' with what are at this point
quarter century old designs.
Ten years ago I would have thought that the idea of 'disposable'
standards whose sole purpose was to effect a transition to some other
standard was mad. Today I really don't see any problem with the idea
that you write a spec whose sole purpose is to enable a transition.
It is pretty hard for any standard to get anywhere unless it is 'open'.
It is not exactly in my employer's interest to allow a competitor to
gain such a position. Nor is it in my competitor's interest to allow me
to achieve such a position.
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