[gnso-vi-feb10] More on closure

["Roberto Gaetano" <roberto@xxxxxxxxx>]

Folks,
There have been several replies to my post last Monday that I would like to
address.
About participation. There is nothing wrong in being busy and not having the
chance to attend all calls. I have skipped once myself.
However, what I was noticing was not an occasional absence, but a trend. And
since we are at that, let's say that the trend is not only lower attendance
to calls, but also far lower email contribution.
There is ample evidence that this WG is far less active than before. Also,
can you name any progress made in the last couple of months? And compare it
to progress made previously.
So there are two points that we need to consider.

First, do we consider this phase, the one where we have produced an interim
report soliciting public comments, closed? Is it closed meaningfully without
an analysis of the comments received (this is orthogonal to the fact that
most of the comments are form members of the group, they are on record and
deserve a follow up). You know my personal answer, which is "No, until we
have not acknowledged receipt of these comments, and produced a final
statement", where "final" does not mean "the very last", but "the one ending
this phase". If the word final is not deemed appropriate, we can find
another one, but the fact is that we can't let our interim report to remain
hanging, without acknowledgement of the comments. Even a "We have read the
comments, and have nothing to add to our previous statements" would be
better than nothing. Much too often we (the internet community) complain
about having sent comments to the Board and having heard nothing about a
follow up. Why are we doing the same now?

The other point is the continuation of the WG, and the next phases. I am not
very much interested in the formal aspects, who has to open a new phase, is
it us or the council or the board? I am, as a first priority, interested in
whether this WG wants to commit to go forward with a next phase. Who has the
authority or the duty to declare a second phase open is completely
irrelevant if this WG has no intention to commit to further work. We can
debate on what are the formal acts to open the new phase, and even on
whether any formal act is needed, but the main and foremost question is
whether this WG is still alive or not. And I am not convinced that the
answer to this latter question is "yes". This is something that I would like
to learn today, during the call and in the email threads surrounding it.

As an addendum to this second question, I would like to say that my
understanding was that we were doing some intense but short term effort to
provide initial indications to council and board about the opportunity,
benefits and risks of vertical integration. The development of a full blown
new TLD policy being a different thing, to be addressed later, also with the
experience of this first (?!?) new round. I might have been wrong, and the
formal charter of this WG could well imply that we must continue to produce
new results. However, also for this matter the doubts arises on whether this
organization that we have given ourselves, with a fast reacting team, some
unorthodox approaches, killing deadlines, intense effort, is the way to go
for a long term PDP. But, again, this is a secondary question, the main one
remaining the issue on whether we do want to commit to continue or whether
there is no motivation to provide the level of effort we have given in the
past.
I like sport analogies. Are we more like Red Bull, failing to close the run
forf the championship in the race where we had the chance to do it, or like
Ferrari, that after a slow period, is chaining up victories and taking the
lead to win the championship?
Looking forward to answers tonight.

Cheers,
Roberto
(from windy Trieste, where the "bora" has started blowing heavily and
expected to be even stronger in the next hours)