Re: [DNSOP] registry in .ALT, was Adoption and Working Group Last Call for draft-appelbaum-dnsop-onion-tld

[Edward Lewis <[e-mail]>]

On 6/9/15, 6:51, "John Levine" <[e-mail]> wrote:

>>In a side conversation about "preventing" badness it was suggested to
>>turn
>>the conversation towards "accommodating correct behavior."  What would it
>>take for someone to pick an identifier space and get it acknowledged?
>
>Write the software and get people to use it.  Once again, this is
>homesteading, not gold rush.

I've seen that run into the rocky shoals.

The note above is not to prevent innovation like this but to accommodate
it.

Many recall the MARID WG and SPF record.  The way I tell the tale, there
was a desire to have a DNS resource record hold a policy expression for
sending email.  To get a type code, an onerous process was in place, which
included proof of substantial work/deployment.

The innovators used the TXT record, became successful.  The IETF "core"
told them to not use the TXT record for standardization, rather propose a
new type.  This was a breaking point because of the installed base.

One of the outcomes from that was a revamping of the policy to get a new
resource record registered in the IANA registry for such things.  The
other outcome is the saga of the SPF record which is not central to my
point here, other than, it hasn't "gone well."

Back to the comment that this is homesteading.  There are two forks from
this.  One is homesteading that keeps to it's own and the other is
homesteading that becomes a part of the neighborhood's life.  Only the
latter needs to have some sort of identifier clash protection - because of
they way I've divided this - and that is for the mutual benefit of the
"it" and "the neighborhood."  That is certainly not a gold rush, just a
natural development of a culture.

Like most systems that evolve over time, there's a point where things
don't work so well.  When there's a lot of reserve capacity, carving out
chunks of space ad hoc works.  As the reserve dwindles, there's a need to
build coordination.  In this case (ALT), and I admit to extremely
stretching this - there could be a competition between those that see ALT
as a short for alternative/alternate or trailing debris from USENET days
and those (a fictional group for illustration only) who see ALT as the
German word for "old" and see a commercial opportunity to use that
(perhaps has a counter to those that use translations of "new", such as NU
in Sweden).  I'm just throwing this as an example that every thing has a
trade off, I've sometimes been surprised where conflict arises in cases.

Relying on homesteading to prove the quality of innovation has a good
track record when there's plenty of space to go around.  But the same
strategy doesn't work so well when resources are depleting and nearing
scarcity.  One might argue that the name space is so large that is
laughable, until one steps on a landmine.

PS - Once Warren said that this isn't about "ALT" - it could be
"FLUGABFARB0129".  Keep in mind my example is simply picking on ALT which
happens to be something I recognize in non-English.  It's just a
coincidence and I'm using this just to push the point that there might be
trade offs to consider external to the DNS world.