John and all,
To answer you last question, first in this response I submit the following:
In order to be inclusive and to meet the rapidly changing demands
that the Internet and the Stakeholder community is now facing and
really has been for some time, I would suggest the we let the At-Large
membership determine what those policies should be for any
SO, to include the PSO and the ASO. This is best accomplished
with determining consensus via a voting process done online..
Now before you go off half cocked, I know that this is not the
"Tradition" of the IETF, which uses "Rough Consensus". However
that method does not really fit for a PSO that is to include more than
just the IETF, hence my suggestion.
John C Klensin wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Apr 1999 16:39:57 +0800 Dave Crocker
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > We need SOME criteria. We can choose to dodge some issues, but a real
> > danger is having meaningless criteria.
> >
> > The ICANN process has rather forcefully pressed to have things open. One
> > would hope that would apply to the standards organizations that formally
> > participate. "Open" standards can mean many things, and if we are not
> > careful, the definition could include popular specifications from private
> >...
>
> Dave,
>
> Let me see if I can restate the problem that is bothering me
> (and may be part of what is bothering Karl and others). If we
> want balance in a PSO (or ASO, see below), the ideal situation
> would be to create objective criteria for who gets in.
> Unfortunately, while the old "we know one when we see one" rule
> applies, such objective criteria are extremely difficult unless
> we just adopt some view of the status quo and freeze it forever.
>
> For example, you would object to seating a single company whose
> documents are considered standards because
>
> -- they are published and anyone can implement them without
> additional fees (or with nominal ones)
> -- they are widely used
>
> so would I; no argument there. But there has been what appears
> to me to be general consensus in this discussion that we should
> seat an organization whose documents are free, but most of whose
> standards development processes are not open to individuals and
> are open to companies only upon the payment of significant
> annual membership fees and whose decision process as to what
> gets standardized are legally and formally the personal
> decisions of one person who is under no formal obligation to pay
> any attention to the consensus process.
>
> I see a difference in the way things are practiced, and am much
> more comfortable with the latter organization/ consortium than I
> am with the "one company" story, but I have no idea how to
> codify that distinction in a way that makes the right decisions
> for the next case to come along.
>
> And that leads to the next problem: the IETF has particular
> ways of doing things. We mostly like them. Many of us believe that
> various elements of those ways contributed, and continue to
> contribute, to the success of the Internet (although we can have
> long discussions about what is critical and what isn't and
> probably never agree). And we tend to associate "success of the
> Internet" with "success of IETF" and bind all sorts of virtues
> to IETF and the IETF way because of it. And that is
> notwithstanding a null hypothesis that we, and TCP/IP, succeeded
> only because we developed a "good enough, but not really
> wonderful" set of solutions in the shadows while others were
> concentrating on either perfection or politics in the spotlight
> and, when the time came that working, global-scale networking
> was needed, we had the only things that worked and interoperated
> at all". That null hypothesis has the Internet winning by
> default, not virtue or quality, and doesn't imbue nearly as much
> virtue in the IETF or its processes as many of us believe it
> has.
>
> But, just like "I know one when I see it", our views of what
> makes the IETF successful and other groups less so seriously
> condition our ability to make decisions about what requirements
> should be placed on those other groups. Worse, when we think
> about the PSO, it is clear to almost everyone that the IETF
> should have a significant, perhaps dominant, role. Similarly,
> examination of the ASO issues indicate that the regional
> registries must have a significant, perhaps dominant, role (this
> is one of the few areas in which the DNSO and "membership"
> situations may be the easier ones -- something that the ICANN
> Board, in its desire to make the SO structures parallel, may not
> have grasped).
>
> But those obviously significant organizations may be
> ontologically incapable of writing reasonable rules for the
> admission of others. Such rule-writing tends to turn too much
> into an exercise in "well, we are successful and this group
> ought to be populated only with successful organizations, i.e.,
> ones that are like us in critical ways and we define the ways".
> One logical fallacy piled on another there, but ultimately
> pretty similar to "we know one when we see one". Worse, since
> part of what is at stake here is a few seats on the ICANN Board,
> one is asking those significant/dominant organizations to vote
> against self-interest if they decide who else gets in.
>
> I've got a lot of confidence in IETF's (and the RIR's)
> willingness and ability to make balanced and rational decisions
> about letting others in. There is, thank whatever deity to
> which one attributes these things, still a lot of altruism in
> this community with regard to the future and success of the
> network. But the appearance and smell of the mechanisms is not
> good, especially when, as is inevitable, we get some members of
> the community arguing for punishing those with whom we disagree
> or who have differing styles of trying to get things done unless
> they mend their ways.
>
> I don't know the way out of this. I was sufficiently frustrated
> and pessimistic before Minneapolis to float a "punt and punt
> hard" strawman. It didn't get consensus, probably because it
> was a bad idea. But I am even more frustrated and pessimistic
> after watching the last few weeks of discussions.
>
> I don't have a solution and hope that someone else can come up
> with one. FWIW, I believe at this point that...
>
> * Some criteria are, as you suggest, relevant and necessary.
> It may be very hard to define them in a precise and
> objective way that also accomplishes the intended goals.
>
> * The IETF probably can't figure out what those criteria should
> be, just because it is a player with a very strong
> perspective.
>
> * The less precise the objective criteria, the more important
> it will become in practice to have a voting or review
> process for who gets in, and the more important it will be
> that everyone understand the selection process will be
> based, in part, on subjective factors.
>
> * That voting or review process cannot be dominated by a model
> in which existing members of the club figure out who else
> gets into the club. It is just too easy for that to
> degenerate, now or later, into a "we admit people who are
> just like us and who see the world our way" situation. And,
> long-term, that probably isn't desirable: had it existed in
> an effective way fifteen or twenty years ago, we might all
> be running OSI. Or SNA.
>
> Anyone have any new and constructive ideas?
>
> john
Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Contact Number: 972-447-1894
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208
