Message-Id: <6.1.2.0.2.20050413024455.032e85b0@mail.jefsey.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 03:06:14 +0200
To: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker@verisign.com>, <ietf@ietf.org>
From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@jefsey.com>
In-Reply-To: <198A730C2044DE4A96749D13E167AD37250179@MOU1WNEXMB04.vcorp.
	ad.vrsn.com>
References: <198A730C2044DE4A96749D13E167AD37250179@MOU1WNEXMB04.vcorp.ad.vrsn.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Cc: 
Subject: Re: Voting (again)
Precedence: list
Sender: ietf-bounces@ietf.org
Errors-To: ietf-bounces@ietf.org

Dear Phillip,
There is a motivation you forgot. It is to take control of your particular 
part of the world in using the IANA to lodge your vision and/or your name. 
Like a micro TLD Manager.

This goes beyond impressing your commercial/political relations in having 
signed an RFC in their area - what you quote as the second motivation. You 
become a permanent acknowledged part of the core of the Internet 
metastructure. A part of the Internet Nobility. A new Larry Robert, Doug 
Engelbart, Louis Pouzin, Jon Postel, Vint Cerf ....
jfc


At 00:43 13/04/2005, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
>Reading through the comments on voting I am struck by a difference in
>the approach people take to what the IETF is for.
>
>* One school of thought is that the reason for starting a working group
>is to arrive at a better engineering outcome than is possible
>independently.
>
>* Another school of thought is that the endorsement of a respected body
>will lead to deployment
>
>* The position I do not see argued is that the point of a working group
>is to establish the constituency required to deploy the proposal.
>
>As far as the first two positions go, I have made the mistake of
>beleiving in them in the past. These days I recognize that there are
>very few occasions where the way to arrive at an optimal solution is to
>get a group of 40 people together to work on it. WG process improves
>proposals in some respects, and is particularly valuable in ensuring
>that there is some sort of consistency in the general approach. But
>there are also serious negatives, a WG spec will inevitably be larger
>when it exits the working group and while the result is more likely to
>be consistent with legacy work the level of internal consistency will be
>less.
>
>I don't think that the imprimataur effect exists, if it did we would all
>be using IPv6, IPSec and DNSsec. And this problem is not limited to
>IETF, the ITU, W3C and OASIS all have the same issue. If you have a spec
>that has already established a critical mass a standard can help
>increase the size of the final deployment constituency. But that is not
>the hard part, the real hard part is getting to that critical mass.
>
>The real point of a working group process is to establish the coalition
>of support you need to get the work deployed.
>
>And this has to be taken into account when you are considering votes.
>
>All a hum tells me is who makes most noise. If I am sitting in a WG
>meeting and I vote for a particular proposal then the meeting knows that
>I have a level of commitment to that proposal. If the group votes the
>other way and I stay in the group even so there is another data point.
>
>In my book people who actually write code and deploy code have a rather
>bigger say in the typical decision than those who do not. If someone
>makes a proposal and the authors of the six major implementations and
>all the ISPs in the room vote against it then in my view the proposal
>isn't happening regardless of what the 'consensus' might be.
>
>The other really big problem with hums is that they can be very
>corrosive of trust in the chairs. The vote might have been in favor 40
>to 10 and the chair assesed the hum as in favor and ten people still go
>to the bar thinking that the system is rigged. Hums lack auditability
>and as recent experience of machine voting in several countries has
>demonstrated auditability is the single biggest issue for a voting
>system as far as most voters are concerned. Large scale intimidation is
>pretty easy to pick up.
>
>The problem is even bigger when the chair decides to abuse their role.
>
>Why can't we elect the WG chairs? Why can't we elect the ADs? I feel
>absolutely no responsibility or duty towards officials that I have no
>part in electing and I don't think many other people do. There is a
>reason why the IESG is generally treated as if it was some sort of
>politburo, that is how people will relate to a body that is formed by a
>proceedure whose clear purpose is to distract the masses. The problem is
>that the IESG is not made up of Vint Cerf, Jon Postel and co any more.
>
>
>If people want to deploy IPv6 or IPSec or DNSsec or any of the other
>decades overdue technologies the IETF has grown infamous for delaying
>the only way it is going to happen is to hold a meeting with the
>stakeholders whose buy in is needed to deploy and to negotiate.
>
>Contrary to what some people believe the problems are not going to be
>solved by a more perfect document. Nor is refusing to hold such a
>meeting under IETF auspices going to stop such meetings happening, in
>fact they are going on already and the IETF is not being invited.
>
>
>The biggest problem with 'voting' is the tourism factor. A group can
>have a carefully worked out possition on a topic and then have it
>wrecked by a group of people coming into the room because they have
>heard about 'the issue' through the totally unbiased and accurate lens
>of a story on Slashdot.
>
>The way the system works in OASIS is that there is a con call every week
>or two weeks and members of the group have to attend the con calls to
>maintain voting rights. That system works really well, there is only one
>occasion that I know of where a group of wreckers were organized well
>enough to sink a rival group and that did not profit them any because
>the group simply decamped to another forum.
>
>The fact that people can leave and take their ball with them is the
>thing that makes the standards process work. It is absolutely not a
>failure of process that a group whose idea is rejected by the IESG can
>go off and work on it elsewhere. It is the only check to balance the
>whole system.
>
>
>The real point of voting is legitimation. Voting on protocol design does
>not make a good deal of sense but as Churchill observed (quoting
>McCaullay) it is better than the alternatives. Allowing the chair to
>impose their own opinion does not make much sense either.
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Ietf mailing list
>Ietf@ietf.org
>https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf


_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf@ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf