Re: [ifwp] regarding potential new IANA initial board members

[peterd@Bunyip.Com (Peter Deutsch)]

[* Note: For the sake of net sanity, I've removed the IETF
   list from the To: line, replacing it with the IANA
   comments address. On the off chance that this might get
   read, and since we're continuing a discussion about
   him, I've added Jon Postel's email to the CC line.  *]


[ Gordon Cook wrote: ]

> Peter.... a reasonable reply

Thank you.

.  .  .
>  sorry let me phrase it differently.  there need be a board which
> understands things well enough to let the technical folk do the technology
> in such away that  the needs of the supporting organizations will not get
> ridden roughshod over by the engineers of the CTO and CEO of IANA.
.  .  .
> Can the suits resolve disputes without adequate understanding of the
> technology??  How do the suits get educated as to the technical issues such
> that they can resolve disputes fairly?

Despite your apparently low opinion of professional
management, history shows us that a good executive doesn't
have to be swamped by the specifics of technology, even in
a technology company. If a stint running a commodity
conglomerate can be good preparation for running one of the
world's largest computer companies, then surely a
successful stint as the CEO of any major corporation can in
some measure help prepare you for the wilds of TLD
administration. It's a mess right now, but it's really not
rocket science and more particularly, just about everyone
agrees the problems are not in the rocket science.


> >>From my reading of the appropriate documents this is a
> >management and policy oversight group, not a technical
> >group and asking for very experienced management types and
> >representatives from public policy groups with a proven
> >track record seems like a good idea.
> 
> again....my question is who is gonna educate them?  you did not answer that.

Okay, then let me be clear. I don't think the kind of
people who will be good at this job will need that much
educating and for what is needed, there will be the SOs.

Again, the problems I see with the IFWP process have far
more to do with sociology than with technology and more
with the personalities than with the processes. Or if you
need a one liner "it's politics, not protocols".


> My perception is that einar is more interested in process issues than in
> specific policies that would benefit one group of DNS issues over another.
> I hope he will speak for himself here shortly, but what I sense is terribly
> important to preserving for the new commercial internet is stef's
> understanding of the decision making processes than have enabled those of
> you who built the internet to do something unprecedented in the history of
> telecommunications .  .  .  start running the internet like a
> typical corporation and you kill the creativity.  isn't that what t his is
> all about?

I'm having another one of my cognitive dissonance attacks.

This is about DNS management, not code development. That's
always been the purvue of a small group of meritocrats (to
coin a phrase).

Jon Postel, the putative villian in this piece, refuses to
hand his baby over to those who would instill democracy
where before there was meritocracy and benign
dictatorship. I haven't asked, and he hasn't offered, but
I assume it's because he doesn't think the IFWP process
will work as well as his will. In doing so, he is vilified
for refusing to engage in the IFWP process and his
proposed organization is vilified as closed and
undemocratic. For much of the debate, the charge was "he
wouldn't change".

Now, as we approach the conclusion, you chide him because
you feel he wants to turn things over to a traditional
corporation, in your mind abandoning the processes that
got us here. The charge is now "he's selling out to the
suits".

Sorry Gordon, I can agree that Jon should have been more
engaged in selling this process, since I think it would
have drained much of the venom from a lot of the people
who are steamed right now, but I can't buy that he's
changed his spots and the people on the IFWP are our only
hope of saving the net from him and the suits.

Without ever having spoken to him about all of this, I'd
judge Jon's behaviour to be very much in keeping with the
old philosophy of "show me it works". This doesn't mean I
think him right. Just that I don't think he's selling out.

.  .  .
> Sorry, to discard the one most likely board candidate who understands the
> process issues worth preserving for the sake of the internet as a whole is
> ludicrous.  ORSC is about an OPEN process....  NOT about one group of
> special interest getting its names in the root before another.

Sorry, I don't have the same high opinion of ORSC you do. I
tracked the ORSC mailing list for several months and IMHO,
ORSC has basically evolved into a closed industry lobby
group, with its fair share of hotheads and firebrands.
They were (again IMHO) also spectacularly bad at P.R.
management (seems to be endemic to this process).

No hard feelings, but I didn't get the warm fuzzies about
these people taking over DNS management and I finally got
off their list when I concluded that there wasn't much
danger of their doing so.

Please don't get me wrong, I do admire some of the people
engaged on that list, but I didn't see the same "open
process" there that you do.  More importantly, I didn't
see the policy equivalent of "running code".


> >This doesn't mean that there is no role for people with
> >his qualifications. In reviewing the ongoing debate on the
> >ifwp list, and the supplemental material put out by the
> >Boston group, I have been persuaded to the Boston group's
> >view that the proposed SOs should be permitted a role in
> >suggesting and reviewing policy, but must not subsequently
> >be given executive power to carry out the implementation
> >of such policy.
> 
> ARGH....do i hear you correctly!?  the non technical retired corporate
> board must no be responsible for carrying out technical policy on behalf of
> the suppoprting organizations?  this falls straight into the trap that stef
> warned about of giving the board so much power that we will never cease to
> fight over who gets onto the board.

The Board would be responsible for *creating and
controlling" policy for ICANN. Presumably they will
delegate much of the implementation to skilled technical
staff. Isn't that what Aikers, Buffet, Gates, Black,
Turner, Eisner and dozens of other skilled executives do
every day? As technical people I suspect we've all been
just a tad too close to the technology on this to see that
the past two years have had essentially nada to do with
technology.

What I heard in the past was that some people wanted the
SOs to both propose policy and be responsible for seeing
it carried out. I judge that to be "the fox guarding the
henhouse" and think that would be a spectacularly stupid
thing to do. Not just a little wrong, spectacularly bad.
As a journalist I'm surprised you don't see a big danger
in that yourself.

Personally, I'd much rather there be a separate governing
body with a clear feedback loop that controls policy and
keeps the various vested interests at bay. I think the
Boston group's changes help that and I only hope they're
heard in all the noise.

As for the need for technical knowlege in a technical
environment, consider the body that was appointed to
investigate the Challenger disaster.

If you'd been selected for that particular panel of
experts, you did need to believe in the scientific method
and have a modicum of technical background, and more
importantly a strong personality and some experience with
large organizations. But if you consider that example, I
trust you'll agree that the failure essentially wasn't a
technical failure at all. It had far more to do with
organizational dynamics, processes and personalities.  The
people appointed weren't from NASA and Morton-Thiokol, but
included people with experience relevant to the problem to
be solved. 


That's why we don't need a Board populated with people who
configure routers and write RFCs, because that's not the
job these people will be doing. It would certainly help to
have one or two around to answer questions but I agree with
Jon (in this case) that it would also help to have a
lawyer or two, perhaps an accountant, someone from the
public policy domain and maybe someone with government
experience. Some people from outside the U.S. are
essential, and so on.

Because the problem to be solved is not a technical one.
it's about manageing a technical process. So your
candidates should have a proven track record in doing that.

Such people do exist.


> .  .  . I can't really say I blame Jon
> >for not trying to become engaged there.
> 
> OK. maybe yes maybe no but he didn't even get engaged on his own lsit.

I do not seek to excuse Jon's failure to engage, but I keep
coming back to the fact that the sometimes reprehensible
behaviour of a subset of the IFWP process, and the failure
of the process to self-police, enabled him to simply
"remain above the fray". Now, if he fails to respond to
the Boston group's efforts I'll be willing to co-sign the
Boston group's proposal when it goes to the U.S.
government (and yes, I've already indicated this to Karl
in email) but frankly, to some degree, I regard the wounds
the IFWP has suffered as having been self-inflicted.


> >in recent weeks I saw him post something to the net on
> >this topic (I presume it also went to the IETF list), Bob
> >Allisat immediately replied in the rudest and most
> >scatalogical terms possible. No surprise, perhaps, but not
> >one person from the IFWP community posted a follow-up
> >criticizing Allisat's behaviour or indicating that this
> >posting had anything but the support of that community.
> 
> I am not an allisat supporter.

What I think many people on the IFWP list don't realize is
just how much the collective process has being tarnished
by the sometimes reprehensible behaviour of various
individual players.  Anyone who's let fly for that brief
moment of self-gratification has measurably harmed the
process.


.  .  .
> when the process is closed it makes it helluva lot harder not to have an
> attitude in pointing same out.

What this debate has needed is more good 19th century
poetry. How about "When you can keep your head when those
about you are loosing theirs..."? Or maybe, "The boy stood
on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled..."? ;-)

Seriously, there are some good strong grounds for
complaint here, but it gets lost in all the noise, 25 cent
political science debates, civics lectures, flame wars and
gratuitous insults. There are a few people who will come
out of this looking good (and I would award a collective
"Atta-Boy, First Class" to the Boston group in particular)
but the IFWP has many times been its own worst enemy.

We are in the end game now, so it's time to collectively
wipe some of the mud off our faces and try to keep our
hands clean until the buzzer sounds. It's too late to take
back all that's been written and said, but we do have some
control over our own actions over the next couple of
weeks. In so doing, we might give credibility to the final
stages and in particular to the real progress being made.
And next time, let's not all get so nasty with each other.


Remember, moderation in EVERYTHING... ;-)


					- peterd



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