Re: [Ianaplan] Fwd: For your Information: CWG-Stewardship Response for Chartering Organization Consideration and Approval

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Saturday, June 20, 2015 11:53 +0000 Milton L Mueller
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>...
> I can't take seriously people who say "if we ever have to
> change IFO everything will be so messed up that it won't
> matter who controls the marks;" this is neither logically true
> (one can posit many scenarios in which it isn't) and it is
> obvious that fighting or confusion over the marks would make
> even that bad scenario worse.
>...

Milton,

I agree with the rest of your note and its conclusion, but the
statement above is a strawman, one that I don't think anyone who
has thought through the issues has actually suggested.  

A closer statement of at least one version of the "not
important" hypothesis would go something like:

"Should the IETF conclude that it is necessary to remove the
protocol parameter registries from the responsibilities and
operation of whoever the IANA Function Operation is at the time,
and do so without that operator's full cooperation (presumably
splitting the IANA function in the process), the amount of work
necessary to relocate registries, sort out new operational
arrangements, etc., would be significant enough that the
marginal work to pick a new name, domain, etc., would be
insignificant."

A perhaps-subtle points in the above is that it presumes the
need for a unilateral move against resistance and the splitting
up of the IANA function.  There is an underlying assumption at
the other end of the spectrum of options.  It is that, if
rearrangements were needed in the future in which everyone
involved more or less agreed about, especially if those new
arrangements included keeping the IANA function together, it
would be just about as easy to sort out name and domain-related
issues then as it would be today.  Indeed, it would be likely to
be easier, because we would be dealing with a concrete situation
and a single plan, rather than trying to design systems on the
basis of what might hypothetically happen.

best,
     john