--On Friday, May 17, 2013 18:54 +0300 Randy Bush <randy@xxxxxxx> wrote: >> To be abundantly clear, you are hypothesizing a difference of >> opinion between the IETF/IESG and the ICANN/RIR communities, >> wherein the technical guidance of the IETF was considered >> during the ICANN/RIR decision process, but in the end the >> outcome was contrary to IETF expectations. > > if you s/expectations/preference/ then there is a growing > track record. try the new greed top level domains (gtlds) for > starters. I've been trying to stay out of this thread, but let me take that a little further. I believe that IETF "preferences" are largely based on the overall welfare of the Internet as a complete system. I also believe that the understanding of that system among IETF participants as a group is generally pretty good. Certainly we fail sometimes; IMO, much more often that I'd like. But there still seems to be rather general agreement about success criteria and those criteria, to quote Harald's comment of some years ago, involve making the Internet work better. In addition, actual capture of the IETF consensus process is really hard. WGs can sometimes be captured by specific interests and the IESG decision processes are sometimes not ideal, but capture is hard. As several recent threads on the IETF list illustrate, large portions of the community are passionate about how decisions are made, express themselves vigorously, and are usually listened to enough to affect actions when that is appropriate. As far as I can tell, large parts of the ICANN community and its decision processes (I'm not going to comment on the RIRs because I don't have nearly enough recent exposure) don't subscribe to those same criteria. Their most-cited criteria are competitiveness. "Security and stability" are chanted as a mantra, but, empirically, that chant is about the avoidance of major, scandalous, problems that can be directly attributed to ICANN decisions rather than about making things better. And the price of entry and effective participation has gradually evolved (or been captured) in a way that biases issue consideration and decision making toward the wishes of a narrow range of commercial interests with short-term profitability goals plus a few symbolic "public" or "civil" "constituencies" whose ability to be effective is constrained by the desire to continue to participate and feed at the ICANN trough (the phrase "enjoy fine lunches and dinners at the expense of others" may be applicable here). Those processes seem to be self-reinforcing and self-reproducing enough, and driven in practice by a narrow enough range of interests, to meet almost any criterion for a "captured" label. The level of harmony and conformance between ICANN's stated principles and core values (as reflected in its bylaws, reference [ICANNBL] in the draft) and ICANN's actual influences and operational and decision-making practices would seem to lie far outside the scope of this document. I think the document reflects a certain naivety about the range of differences between theory and practice, but I'd not convinced that is harmful beyond some risks of making the authors look silly in some conceivable future scenarios. If the "technical guidance of the IETF" were really based on the best interests of a better Internet and then used as input to a process that doesn't consider that a particularly useful criterion, then an outcome that is contrary to that advice is nearly inevitable unless the advice coincidentally matches the criteria that are actually being used. What should be done about that is a different and, sadly complex matter (especially given the risks of significant collateral damage that could harm the Internet). But it doesn't seem to me that is the present issue. For the present document, if it accurately describes the current situation and how things have evolved since 2050, then it is worth publishing. If we don't like how things work, it seems to me that changing that is part of a different effort and that a good current description is a necessary starting point. I, however, do have one significant objection to the current draft of the document and do not believe it should be published (at least as an RFC in the IETF Stream) until the problem is remedied. The Introduction (Section 1) contains the sentence "Since the publication of RFC 2050, the Internet Numbers Registry System has changed significantly." That sentence is expanded upon in Section 6, which bears the interesting title of "Summary of Changes Since RFC 2050". But Section 6 contains no such summary, merely a statement that things have changed and that some material -- unidentified except by the broadest of categories -- has been omitted. I do not believe this document is complete enough to publish as an RFC in the IETF Stream without a real summary of the changes since 2050, preferably with either explanations of each significant change or references to the documents or discussions that instituted or explained those changes. best, john