Re: [hrpc] I-D Action: draft-irtf-hrpc-political-03.txt

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 08, 2019 at 06:42:59PM -0500, Juliana Guerra wrote:
> Hello Niels, I've read your I-D and I can't say something else than I
> think it's very interesting and you've synthesized very well the
> previous versions. And I'm not sure if it is out of the draft scope, but
> in ietf-lac (1) there is a recent (and also a long term, as I've seen)
> discussion on lac community participation in IETF. Some of the issues
> are:
> 
> - the possibility for lac community to publish RFCs
> - meetings in Lac region
> - participation fees

The discussion the above kicked off made me realise something I hadn't
been able to put my finger on before, but that has probably been part
of my concern about the way draft-irtf-hrpc-political has framed
things all along.

There are actually two classes of claim in the draft, and they can be
separated:

	1.  The processes by which protocols get adopted are [at least
	partly] political.

	2.  Protocols are [or are not] inherently political [or
	politically charged, or whatever].

It seems to me that there are a number of cases where the distinction
between these two is not maintained rigorously, or else a necessary
premise linking them (we could call it 1.5: "Anything that is adopted
through a poltical process is itself political") is going unstated.

Section 4.5 is where this happens most strongly, because the move from
the Postman claims to the points of DeNardis about the processes
appears to be used to support proposition type 2 whereas DeNardis is
actually arguing for 1.

I don't know if I am alone in thinking this is not quite as explicit
as it ought to be.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]