Vittorio,
The IETF as an institution developed attributes of a religious cult
since the mid-90s - essentially distilling a kind of true-believer over
time as evidenced by its own attendance records. Your remark has been
described in innumerable articles on the IETF. One of the tenets is
this characteristic of being adherents to a common set of beliefs is
being a legend in their own minds. Because it is heavily imbued with
essentially eternal academics, it is a useful venue for generating ideas
not seen elsewhere - which ironically was why DOD funded it for most of
its first 25 years with some NSF funds thrown in. It would be
interesting to get an economic analysis of the IETF as an institution.
--t
On 1/9/2023 6:14 AM, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Il 06/01/2023 02:19 CET Mark Nottingham
<mnot=40mnot.net@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> ha scritto:
The IETF has considerable legitimacy as not only an institution that can create useful technical documents, but also as a steward of the Internet architecture as a means to realise and maintain a global public good, even as we ourselves are an essentially private institution. In contrast, state actors are still relatively unproven in their roles as Internet regulators.
Pardon me for the thought-provoking remark, but if you were to say this to any European Commission officer or national Internet regulator, you would possibly get a diplomatic version of the following question: who are you, the IETF or your employer to judge or question what a sovereign nation of 5-10-80 million people decides for themselves through democratic processes? Who gave you this right and this role, and how is this compatible with democracy?
(hint: there is no such thing as "a global public good" but many different ideas of what that would be, as the definition of "good" is highly cultural and subjective, the more so on a global scale; thus, defining what the "global public good" is, for policy purposes, is not a matter of competence but of representativeness, exactly like in the "old world" offline)
