Re: [soac-newgtldapsup-wg] JAS New gTLD Applicant Support WG Charter

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard,

When I looked at the drafts during the Winter break what I saw was a 
difference in the conception of assistance. This in addition to the 
specific differences.
In the "ALAC draft" assistance is conceptualized as non-fungible and 
fungible, and a collector is explicitly mentioned to hold the bag for 
at least the fungible, and possibly some of the non-fungible forms of 
assistance, and some allocation scheme is required, though not 
defined. Somewhere someone convinces someone else to give money.
In the "GNSOC draft" assistance is conceptualized as non-fungible and 
there are no third-parties, as collectors or as allocators, of the 
assistance. There's no someone convincing someone else to give money.
In the "ALAC draft" the donors may not be the sole actors determining 
the recipients of assistance.
In the "GNSOC draft" there are no necessary parties other than donors 
and recipients, and therefore no actor other than donors determining 
the recipients of assistance.
And as I mentioned, there is a bunch of specific differences, most are 
editorial (lots of words becomes few words), two sections deal with 
control of information between the GNSOC chartered body and the ICANN 
Board, which is only binding on the GNSOC in any case.
To your follow-up question on 1(b) in the GNSOC's charter, the point 
of both 1(a) and 1(b) is to determine the eligibility for assistance 
of some resources.
The presence of 1(c) in the ALAC charter and its absence in the GNSOC 
charter goes to the issue of acquisition of a fungible assistance 
resource. As the GNSOC's charter intentionally excludes fungible 
resource acquisition, the apparent broadness of its language in 1(b) 
is limited to what resources exist, identified in its _limited_ other 
clauses.
As a general observation, not directed at you at all, this train wreck 
did not have to happen.
It has not been useful for some to have approached contracted parties 
as motivated by self-interest alone or primarily, as the motivations 
go beyond the apparent substance, such as the allocation of "auction 
revenue" to anticipated expenses other than registry failover and 
other costs that have been hypothesized well before Resolution 20 was 
drafted, and to the sources, and therefore the control, of ICANN's income.
It has also not been useful for some of the contracted parties to have 
concealed the absence of consensus in their respective stakeholder 
groups, or to have approached non-contracted parties as motivated by 
political interest within the GNSOC, or within the ICANN SO/AC structures.
The applicants that need help are not going to appreciate being 
exploited in internecine sniping as a means to score political points.
This trainwreck may be un-wrecked, but until it is, I think that 
proceeding along the lines of the ALAC charter (with attention to 
minority languages, whether a non-Latin or a Latin script is used) and 
engaging other ICANN structural entities such as the ccNSO, the GAC, 
and the ASO, and leaving the GNSO stakeholders to figure out for 
themselves what they are going to do in response to Resolution 20.
Eric