| Thanks for this, Brian. It is always valuable to reconsider things, particularly looking at the big picture & whose role is what. There’s a lot to think about of course. And I agree with Melinda about the need to consider things from a long-term perspective rather than reacting to a particularly painful issue. But after a quick read I did want to say that I agree with most of the observations you had. Although I don’t necessarily agree with everything. Being particularly interested in IANA, this part caught my eye for instance. You wrote: This model was consolidated by the IETF-ICANN MoU [RFC2860] and subsequent supplementary agreements, formerly between ICANN and ISOC, now between ICANN and IETF LLC. In practice the IAB has no active role here and technical instructions to IANA come from the IESG, usually in the form of approved RFCs. A major difference from the RFC Editor situation is that IANA is a function executed by a completely independent corporate entity with its own revenue stream. It is unclear to me that the IAB has any meaningful oversight role in the current situation. To begin with, the current model with IANA is working very well. It is stable, serves IETF well, there’s appropriate amount of IETF control, from my observation point at least the relevant relationships are all good, and from a worldwide perspective the IANA system is in good hands. But I think there’s more to the system than what you write above. Obviously, on the IETF side the technical input (particularly regarding content) comes from the IESG, and the LLC signs the contract. That being said, the Trust owns the IPRs, there’s the CCG among the different communities using IANA, the IAB has an IANA program, and so on. The IAB IANA program is (thankfully) in a monitoring-that-everything-is-running-smoothly mode. It has no operational role or formal role in contracts, as described in https://www.iab.org/activities/programs/iana-program. However, we do give advice regarding revisions to yearly SLA contracts, for instance, and keep monitoring what’s going on, and thinking when the system needs changes. A few years ago when the system needed an overhaul, many groups had plenty of work to do. In the IETF the working group and the IAB did most of the heavy lifting. From my perspective the IANA system (incl. the role for the IAB) is working well. We should not change the engines from this flying airplane :-) Jari |
