> Behalf Of JFC (Jefsey) Morfin > This is why I suggest the real danger for the IETF is the > collusion of > large organisations through external consortia to get a > market dominance > through de facto excluding IETF standardisation and IANA > registry control. > And this is why I suggest the best way to address it is > simply to ask for > the truth, the whole truth. The problem with this approach is that it becomes self-defeating. The work of the IETF gets clogged up by individuals whose sole objective is to block what they see as the encroachments of evil corporations at all costs. Even if they can't see the evil globalization scheme immediately they will block progress anyway just in case. The result is that corporations that want to get work done either go to other forums or craft proposals that are so narrowly drafted that they amount to a rubber stamp. Certainly there are bizare corporations attempting to achieve some sort of stranglehold. Anyone remember digital convergence and the CueCat? That type of behavior tends to come from market entrants rather than established companies. Once you have a stake in the open Internet the probability of success in a closed 'walled garden' scheme isn't high enough to be interesting. Furthermore the people working for those corporations tend to consider themselves advocates for and responsible to their customers and their customer's customers at least as much if not more than their shareholders. Sit at the back of the plenary sessions. Watch the number of people opening up their laptop and starting a telnet session. Less than 5% of the billion plus Internet users interact with their machine in that way. The IETF membership is totally unrepresentative of the billion plus Internet users. Worse still the prevaling attitude is of the 'anyone can become like us only not quite so skilled' type. Most people don't want to have to become computer experts. The IETF does not have a veto over the development of the Internet. There are plenty of standards organizations to choose from. Nor for that matter does IANA. All IANA is is a voluntary arrangement that exists because people choose to recognize it. There is in practice nothing to stop individuals simply declaring that they will use a particular code point. As a thought experiment consider what happens if someone decides they want the DNS RR 88 and just goes and uses it. If they succeed and their standard is used nobody else is going to accept issue of RR #88. And that is all anyone needs from IANA. This total lack of control is actually not such a bad thing. It means that if the International 'Internet Governance' cabal that wants to capture the IANA were to succeed the success it would not matter very much. > This is the only way to obtain open, scalable and > uniform standards. Are these the right goals? Surely meeting the needs of the users should come somewhere in the list. Uniformity in standards can be a good thing. But there are also disadvantages to insisting on 'consistency' with what are at this point quarter century old designs. Ten years ago I would have thought that the idea of 'disposable' standards whose sole purpose was to effect a transition to some other standard was mad. Today I really don't see any problem with the idea that you write a spec whose sole purpose is to enable a transition. It is pretty hard for any standard to get anywhere unless it is 'open'. It is not exactly in my employer's interest to allow a competitor to gain such a position. Nor is it in my competitor's interest to allow me to achieve such a position. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf