Unlike the previous matter of an individual who clearly engaged in threats and ad-homenem attacks, this appears perilously close to being an attempt to suppress a minority viewpoint. Minority viewpoints need to be heard, regardless of whether the minority is a minority of one, and regardless of how persistent and how (in)articulate the minority may be. This does not mean that the chair cannot find consensus against the minority view. However, it strikes me as an abuse of process to revoke posting rights because the majority is tired of hearing the minority opinion.
Mr. Morfin has been accused of straying into "off-topic" postings. I cannot judge from the examples presented whether this is the case. However, I observe that setting WG scope can serve a constructive purpose in allowing the group to maintain focus by avoiding peripheral issues, or it can be a way of biasing the agenda toward a particular result, of ignoring important issues or of suppressing dissent.
Dear Dan,
you are perfectly correct. But in this case I faced a "second level" case where an active minority made itself a majority, boring everyone out but m,e because I needed for my own business survival to impeach the market exclusive they were at building.
So, I faced a Unicode affinity group which managed to appear as the majority in presenting in the first WG-Chair's mail a complete Draft, ready for IESG LC (it just failed as an individual Draft - they thought that putting a WG stamp on it would be enough). Because of that, most of the possibly interested experts did not contribute, or did not join. I had been the most active in making the text fail the last call. I therefore proposed to co-write the Draft (it would have been done in two days with non-business biased people). The minority leader (WG-Chair) refused. We then saw a long "consensus by exhaustion" because I did not exhaust.
I balanced between starting a war with 10, 100 or 200 supporters. This would have killed the IETF (look at the PR today, if we had tens of them ....) and convinced no one of the interest of the IETF. And crusading to obtaining the text to be cleaned from most of its confusion, to make it less dangerous. I explained that I will appeal the IESG, the IAB, the IANA, the UNESCO, the ITU etc. etc. against the text until it matched its Charter. The Charter has been written by the minority/majority group to fool the IESG. It is not perfect but considering it, would have shown many inconsistencies we start seeing now. My main opposition was "consider the Charter" (in the IETF the IESG does not consider the Charter anymore to accept a Draft).
I obtained everything I wanted:
- the text is now cleaner. It was adopted after the Tunis agreement.
- in parallel the WSIS confirmed my position about multilingualism (IAB does not want to consider) calling for work on language codes
- via an appeal the IESG must review the security aspects which make the text quite unusable (privacy violation)
- via an appeal the IAB must say if they want the IETF to consider the usage/ethic impact of its decisions and the building of the Multilingual Internet, or if these issues must be discussed elsewhere.
This builds a situation where the "majority" loses its control on the IETF or its control on the real Language Registry (not any more the IANA). The choice is difficult. The PR action is a Denial of Thinking to try the IESG and the IAB cannot set their mind. But this does not bother me, because they will have "failed to respond". This is why the need is to unconsiderate me.
Either the IETF maintains the Tunis Internet (the native proposition) controlled by the USA and supported by the IANA. Or the IETF engages into a new architecture based upon a distributed registry system (DRS). This implies a user-centric usage architecture (which calls for a convergence of the digital continuity). A technology and economical shift of importance, the US industry and the IETF are not prepared to. This is why the PR was prepared by an anti-EU set-up, opposing the WSIS positions - to involvedthe IESG. At the end of the day if the IETF opposes everyone it will have to go with Unicode ... look at the list of the Members and of the Executives.
They have been very candid. Before attacking me seriously (physical allusions, anonymous calls, etc.[this is the IETF :-) and PR action) I was once asked "do you realise how much you cost to the industry?". I asked back "which industry?". The control of the text industry is far bigger than music, pictures and games.... What they do not understand is that its value comes from its diversity and Liberty.
If you are familiar with the French Minitel and Telematic, I use to say that we (France) built the Minitel I, that the web is the Minitel II and that we have now (mobiles, coreboxes, new appliances, network continuity) to support the Minitel III phase. I happen to have experimented in real life that architecture and to be in charge of its analysis and international deployment (Tymnet). What I sold for $ 250.000 to State monopolies 20 years ago, is what you should soon be able to giveaway in a mobile to 3 billion people.
Having been both in majorities and in minorities over the past 20 years or so, I know that process protection for minority rights is frustrating to the majority. I also recognize that the minority is sometimes right. Patient negotiation, no matter how difficult or time consuming, is the best remedy.
I spend my time pleading for consensus. The technical solution is easy enough using RFC 4151 space. The problem is that they need an exclusive (like ICANN vs. open roots). Negotiation would be like ICANN accepting open roots.This is true that this is what ICANN does: with NeuStar and GSMA, with China, etc.
I urge the IESG to give Mr. Morfin the benefit of the doubt.
Thank you, but I am expandable. The IETF should not be. At least right now.
Take care.
jfc
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