Re: [Ianaplan] control and negotiation (was Re: draft-ietf-ianaplan-icg-response-02 working group last call)

[Miles Fidelman <[e-mail]>]

Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 04, 2014 at 04:51:12PM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>
>> When it comes to legal, contractual, and governance matters - the IETF is
>> more than it's working groups, it includes the IAB, IESG, IAOC, etc (as
>> components of the IETF); the ISOC (as "parent" or whatever of the ISOC); and
>> arguably the "protocol parameters community" is more than just the IETF.
>> These perspectives are reflected, at best, informally, in the charter and
>> discussions of the WG.
> It seems to me that the IETF has managed to set up all those
> organizations except for ISOC.  So what about the IETF makes you think
> that it is incapable of drawing conclusions about organizations and
> institutional arrangements?

I'm not.  I'm observing several things:
- the outside world (or the plain observer) does not see the granularity 
- and things like "the IETF will ask the IAOC to conclude supplemental 
agreement" are just incredibly murkey reading
- the WG charter has excluded a bunch of topics that one would expect to 
see in a complete response to the ICG RFP - particularly legal and 
contractual stuff
- the WG charter seems to focus on a subset of the issues requested by 
the RFP
- other components of the IETF - like the IAOC, the IAB are not really 
involved in the discussion (e.g., nobody seems to want to have any 
lawyers involved in the discussion) - and I have yet to see any 
discussion of how those components/perspectives are going to be 
incorporated into the formal response to the ICG
>
> I note that the IAB's opinion is explicitly called out in the existing
> draft; and speaking with my IAB hat on just for a moment, I can tell
> you that the IAB is in fact paying attention to this document and that
> it cannot be published with the claim that the IAB agrees with it
> unless the IAB does in fact agree.
>
> The IAOC, of course, is going to need to be able to implement such
> advice as the WG delivers.  So we can expect that the diligent members
> of the IAOC will also undertake relevant review.

But where are the members of the community being engaged in that 
discussion.  This all sounds more like "we'll wave our hands over things 
and adjust/bless them." That's not an open process.

> It strikes me that there seem to be some who would like to claim that
> more grown-up or professional or serious or what-have-you procedures
> -- basically, "more like I would prefer" -- are needed for this
> effort.  But the argument for that conclusion appears to be simply
> repetition of the claim.  One needs rather a better argument than
> abusive _ad hominem_ ("wishy washy" and so on) to be convincing.

Well, how about the WG charter limiting the scope of discussions to a 
subset of the ICG RFP?
>
> I find it interesting that I've been in engineering discussions where,
> when people didn't feel that they was getting the desired
> result, they started raising questions about the legitimacy for
> the group to work on the topic at all.  Perhaps engineering and
> contractual-principles discussions are not so different after all.

Well... I've been raising this concern from the beginning.

Cheers,

Miles


-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra