IP: ISOC Forces Announce: Open IFWP IANA Process Doomed to Fail

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

I was hesitant to burden your mail boxes with more on this , but since it is getting wide distribution courtesy of 
Gordons talented typing hand, here it goes.


As usual responsible comments are welcomed.


Dave


Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 01:02:54 -0400
To: ietf () ietf org
From: Gordon Cook <cook () cookreport com>


Introduction by Gordon Cook:


With a slip of the keyboard on the IFWP list today what ISOC and IANA are
saying behind their closed doors became public. Amadeu Abril and Werner
Staub are members of the IFWP steering committee.  Abril is a POC spokes
person and Staub is ISOC Geneva.  Both are good foot soldiers for Don Heath
president of ISOC who on June 10th went public with his strategy to
overwhelm the IFWP process (International forum on the White paper which
has run the Reston, Geneva, Singapore and Buenos Aires meetings and is now
talking about a wrap up meeting in Boston.)


Abril is at the IETF meeting and apparently needed help from Staub to get
his message sent to the right place.  Apparently without thinking he typed
in the public ifwp-list rather than the private steering committee list.
We can be grateful that he did because, as readers will see below, he makes
his contempt for the open IFWP process clear.  There is one church (ISOC)
lead by one POPE (Jon Postel) and if the rest of us don't like it we can go
to hell.


The steering committee does have an apostate named Jim Dixon however.
Those who have followed this closely will recall that Heath tired to remove
Dixon from the committee earlier in the summer and failed.  In the message
below Dixon has taken Abril's misposted message to IFWP and written a
commentary on it.


I hope list members will read and savor Abril's arrogance.  Abril,
POC/CORE, ISOC, IANA knew what the end game was some months ago.  The
script was theirs to write.  They now realize that their only hope is to
remain aloof from the IFWP process and offer instead a package dressed in
the uniform of the "opinion of the internet community."  Their package will
indeed be presented to Ira Magaziner as the consensus of the internet
community because they are taking great care not to offer legitimacy to
anyone who comes from outside their point of view.  They have a solution.
Jon will present it to the IETF in the morning.  Having a wrap up meeting
risks sullying that solution.  So by god they will do what ever they can to
prevent it and bring the IFWP process to an end NOW.  Abril even makes
clear that, as I suggested last night, his ISOC clique has the board
membership all sown up.   They will choose them.  To hell with the rest of
us.  This is the boshevism of IHAC all over again.  The tiger has in no way
changed his strips.


Consider after all the opinion of Kent Crispin, head of the Policy Advisory
Board to the Policy Oversight Committee to the Council of Registrars. (All
this alphabet soup the progeny of IAHC.) Crispin: The argument is that we
should not set up a meeting where we cannot  afford a failure, and further,
the IFWP process, by its very nature, is very likely to fail, if such a
meeting is held.  Therefore, such a meeting should not be held.  That is
the argument. . . . Amadeu is stating, fairly clearly I think, that it is
intrinsically beyond the capability of the IFWP process to actually produce
useful documents.  Further, (I will add) the very idea that the IFWP has a
mandate to produce documents is quite questionable.  There certainly is no
consensus to that effect." [Cook:  in Crispin's opinion IFWP will fail
because it DOES represent an open process.]  Crispin concludes: I find it a
fairly straightforward argument:  avoid a failing scenario; adopt a
scenario that works.  Working with IANA to come up with an acceptable
document is perfectly viable, and quite pragmatic."


Cook:The message follows:  [> removed and names prepended for clarity]


Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 19:22:02 +0100 (BST)
From: Jim Dixon <jdd () matthew uk1 vbc net>
To: IFWP Discussion List <list () ifwp org>
cc: comments () iana org
Subject: [ifwp] don't start this thread, please


On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, Werner Staub [ISOC Geneva] wrote: [Staub is forwarding
the Abril message]


On Monday, 24 August 1998, Amadeu Abril i Abril [POC spokesman in buenos
Aries on aug 20] wrote:


Abril: Werner, could you please forward this message to ifwp-list? I'm
having trouble with my outgoing mail server. August, you know ;-)) signed
amadeau


Dixon: I think that Amadeu meant that this was to be sent to the steering
committee's closed list, ifwp-discuss () itu int, but since it is here ...;-)


Abril: Hi SCers,[steering committee members] In the previous mail on next
teleconf, I skipped all references to the so-called final meeting, step one
(the Boston Tea, if you prefer). It has been my strong position that we as
SC cannot be involved at all in the preparation of such meeting. I
understand that thee is some level of consenus in that point.


Dixon: Amadeu is referring to the closed "editorial" meeting proposed by
Tamar Frankel in Singapore. This was to be followed by an open
"ratification" meeting.


Abril: Tamar had promised to send some written coments on that meeting, but
they have not reached my mailbox. In my view, this is a good sign.  I
insist that this is none of SC business. But as some among us keep asking
what everybody thinks is the best possible way to get some closure on this
process, and at least one among us (our dear Jay) has some "penchant" to
interprete silences, agreements and disagreements aling what he calls
"party lines" in a way that appears a little bit unnatural, forced and even
disturbing, I prefer to state (once again) *my* personal views on that
issue, so anyone can check my positions within the SC against them. Perhaps
it is useful that we all give our opinion, so we know where we stand. But
indeed I will NOT engage in any discussion in the ifwp-discuss list
regarding this mail or any other you could send on this topic. It is ou of
our goals.


Dixon: I think that what Amadeu is trying to say is that "it is out of our
goals", that is, it is not the proper business of the steering committee as
such to discuss or agree upon policy. We have indeed agreed upon this.
However, this is not true of individuals on the steering committee speaking
in other forums, such as this one. However, having said that it is not the
business of the steering committee to discuss policy, Amadeu then goes on
to discuss policy at great length. He concludes by asking no one to reply
to him. A tour de force, I think.


Abril:  I'm more than skeptical about the Boston Tea step. It is misplaced,
A) Probably useless: We know that 30 people in a room is not the best
scenario to get anything significant achieved. What's more we know that
many "snipers", "creamers" and what could be termed as "marginal players"
would be invited. Self-asserting of representativeness seems to play a
great role. This is fine for a proceess, but really dangerous for a unique
meeting where WE CANNOT AFFORD A FAILURE. And as it is described we risk


Dixon: This is an extremely odd argument: this meeting is so important that
we cannot hold it. These decisions are so important that we cannot reach
them.


Abril: having there many folks more interested in derailing the whole
process, making noise or just wanting to make history than closing this
process. Rather dangereous. B) Still too unclear. No matter who sits there,
I have not seen any attempt to clarify who-counts-for what. Saying that we
all have to compromise is too thin a statement. Imagine that the Catalan
Reasearch Foundation, which I represent within this process, sits there.
Does NSI have to compromise with FCR as to the composition of the Names
Council? And with CORE? And what happens if the ISPs represented have a
different vision aboutthe Protocls council than IAB? And what happens if
Joe Sims prefers California for incorporation, Tamar prefers Delaware, I
prefer Switzerland and the rest don't care?. We all don't weight the same.
And the relative weights are diverse according to different issues. If you
have ten people negotiating, this can be sooved easily. If we have 30, and
most espcially, if this means having many marginal players, the issue is
very hard to solve. And any likely compromise, seriously compromised....


Dixon: Amadeu appears to propose that we can solve the problem of dissent
by not inviting anyone he agrees with. What we need is a group of ten or so
people, none of whom disagree too much with one another. Right ...


Abril C) Misplaced. September 11-13 is way too late. I already pointed to
some aspects that may not help to achieve a complete agreement. If it
fails, even in not-that-central points, NO time would be left to recover
form such failure. Even the task of working out the details would be
problematic if we take that date as a start. The real work has to be done
much before (now, just now).


Dixon: Once again, the argument is that since there is some risk that the
closed meeting might not reach a conclusion, there should be no meeting at
all. This is a most peculiar argument.


Abril:  D) Potentially harmful. One possible, likely otucome of this
meeting (if everything works well, what I doubt) is the production of a
version of the nIANA Aoi and Bylaws. Or, most likely, guidelines for
writing them. Berkman Center, Tamar or both are as legitimated as anybody
else to produce such documents. Perhaps a little bit more than anyobdy else
;-) But we cannot run in all directions, producing competing documents for
the same goal. This is the wrost possible scenario.


Dixon: In other words, any result is OK, so long is it does not differ from
the current IANA bylaws, which in their current form feature


… no membership
… a self-selecting board
… articles that can be changed at any time by the board, with   no
particular majority required
… bylaws that can be changed by 2/3 of the board


Dixon: These articles permit the new corporation to be changed in all of
its regards by a board selected by some unknown group, a board which is
accountable to no one.


Dixon: I have seen nothing come out of the IFWP discussions that is so
irresponsible as the IANA third draft. If this small group of 30 people
produced anything similar to the IANA draft, I for one would denounce them.
Yet Amadeu's basic requirement is that the outcome of the proposed closed
meeting should not differ from the IANA draft; his basic requirement is
that the new corporation have no membership, have a self-selecting board,
and have articles changed by a casual vote of whoever attends a board
meeting. The fact that each of the IFWP meetings has rejected each of these
either specifically or in spirit is ignored.


Abril: So what now? I insist in what I have said many times before. In
principle, I don't care weho actually wirttes the documents, as I would
judge them on its contents. If it is Jeff Williams, I'd welcome it. But we
should not forget that what we are doing is not reinventing the wheel, but
restructuring IANA (reingeneering it, as the techies prefer to say). IANA
has the historical responsability to take a lead in this process. Their
active involvement and explicit support to any solution is a precondition
of my (much less important) support.


Dixon: IANA is a technical body. At no time have they shown themselves as a
group to have any particular skill in this direction that we are now
considering. The DNS wars of the last two years are a clear demonstration
that IANA should not lead: it should ask for advice from the commercial,
legal, and political communities and follow that advice. This was in fact
one of the reasons for the IFWP process: to bring better judgement to bear
on the process of forming the new corporation.


Abril: Let me try to be clearer: If IANA produces a version that clearly
deviates form what is the industry cnsensus (as expressed within IFWP and
elsewhere), I'll oppose such move. More importantly, I'll oppose any move
that fails to provide what I deem most relevenat in this moment: clear
structures for wideparticipation and accountability, and room for evolution
and change of the system as we all might deem it appropriate. And a method
to get a strong board, able to move this difficult org forward.


Dixon: Amadeu, you contradict yourself. The IANA draft lacks accountability
in the most fundamental way.


Abril: So I'd like that Tamar, and the Berkman Cneter is that is to be
helpfull, work with Joe Sims on the docs. I hope that all them would
contact the real key players. And anybody else they deem important, or even
risky to be left out. Up to them. And I hope that really soon /no later
than the end of this week) we have the final, or nearly final version of
such docs. With IANA as a signatory. Then I'd judge whether I support or
oppose them. And let the community decide whose opinion they trust
better....


Dixon: This is an abdication of the trust that so many people have placed
in the IFWP process. Joe Sims, the author of the IANA articles and bylaws,
gets to write the IFWP articles and bylaws too. A great idea, one
guaranteed to build "consensus".


Abril: So in my view the Boston "first step" is at best the second one. One
that comes when the dish is already cooked, and that could even bring some
dangers. It is most a cosmethic meeting. If we have to play it, we'll do,
but the further we go the most sceptical I am... Going though the three
steps is too complicated, and evn risky. We need a lighter structure, I
fell. As for the names in the board, I hope that a list with the best
"nominations" will be presented. And I guess that those with less
"opposition" will be the first board. Who should be asked about them? Well,
let me say that I think that I should be asked. Nor the overwhelming
majority of this SC. But, agsain, this is not up to me to decide.


Dixon: The prescription we are being presented with is


… after all these meetings, simply accept the IANA articles,    although
they have worsened from draft to draft
… ask Amadeu who should be on the Board


Dixon: This beggars belief.


Abril: This has benn my scenario from day one. Two months of IFWP have not
changed my mind. IFWP has been very yseful, much more than I first thought,
in order to bring many players to the discussion and provide some points of
consensus (but not enough to build the new entity). It is not that I cannot
imagine a better scenario. Is that I cannot see any other alternative that
could work, given the circumstances. OK. Hear you tomorrow, probably. And
don't start a thread on this mail, please. Amadeu


Dixon: And this is the rest of the prescription:


*       listen to Amadeu, but don't waste time replying


Like I said at the beginning, this was probably intended just for the
steering committee, which is not supposed to discuss policy questions.


-- Jim Dixon Managing Director VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117
929 1316
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