Jay,
I read with interest your report.
Let me point out the couple of points where I don't share your POV.
You wrote:
<snip>
> Things really got interesting the next day at the open
> ICANN Board meeting. What started out as a presentation
> of the CENTR compromise proposal, quickly devolved into
> an attempt to accept the BMW draft as the basis for the
> DNSO.
>
Jay, what is, unfortunately, commonly addressed as "the CENTR proposal" is
in fact a common document, agreed by all participants in the previous day's
DNSO meeting, and is in fact the "Singapore Draft".
The importance of this document has not to be underestimated: for the first
time (to the best of my memory), delegates coming from different DNS
religions and with different business affiliations and/or interests agreed
on a rather wide spectrum of points as a compromise solution.
Like for every compromise solution, nobody was 100% satisfied, but I had the
impression that the sense of achievement was great among all of us at the
end of the DNSO day.
Unfortunately, the food fight started again during the ICANN Open Meeting,
when (few) supporters of the BMW and Paris Drafts returned to praise the
virtues of their respective original documents vs. the common document, but
that's life.
This became clear upon comments made by ICANN Board
member Hans Kraaijenbrink, who upon further questions from
Fay Howard of CENTR, revealed his affiliation to BMW
supporters.
People that were not there could get the wrong impression that Hans
expressed support to the BMW Draft, which is not what he said.
He said that ETNO, a company in which Board he is, expressed support to the
BMW Draft, but he didn't made up his mind.
As both elements were known (Hans is in the Board of ETNO, and ETNO
supperted the BMW Draft), I fail to see the relevance of the fact.
> By the end of the day, few knew where the board was
> going, and we left the fate of the DNSO in their hands
> to be decided in their closed board meeting scheduled for
> the next day.
>
> Much to my surprise, the board voted to adopt a DNSO
> very much like the CENTR proposal, *with* a non-commercial
> domain name constituency. IMHO, this was a major victory
> that revealed that this board could make difficult decisions,
> and that it could be influenced by public opinion and
> scrutiny.
>
I was not surprised at all.
This comes to the fact I outlined before: the achievement of us all,
participants to the DNSO process, in coming to a statement of principle
shared by all, was a fact of an extraordinary relevance, that could not fail
to catch the attention of the Board.
Regards
Roberto
