Re: [Ianaplan] CWG draft and its impact on the IETF

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 09:53:21PM +0000, Milton L Mueller wrote:

> This means that comments questioning "what problem PTI is trying to solve" or "whether we should move in the PTI direction" are quite misdirected. We are not discussing whether PTI will happen, but whether IETF will choose to secede from it. 
> 

I don't understand how that is a helpful position to take.  People
asking, "What problem is this trying to solve?" and, "Should we move
in that direction?" are not doing that for the fun of it.  Most of us
don't have a professional interest in governance models _qua_
governance model, though I am aware that at least one of us does.

Instead, they are asking perfectly reasonable clarifying questions --
reasonable partly because the CWG released for public comment a
proposal that was _in its own admission_ (indeed, stated in the text
itself) full of incomplete answers, and unsettled and controversial
issues.  It's hardly surprising that people should ask the sorts of
questions they're asking.  

> Does IETF want to add to the transition a new process of extracting itself from the current IANA department and leaving the protocols registry as a stand-alone service within ICANN? 
> 
> Or does it want the protocols functions to move with the names and number functions into PTI? 
> 
> That's the real choice. 

It's not the "real choice"; in fact it's a false alternative.  It
seems to me that, without quite a lot of additional detail, it's more
or less impossible to know whether it would be better to continue the
MoU with ICANN, or to undertake a new agreement with a PTI, or to
initiate a completely new arrangement including an RFP process, or
just to take the entire thing over and bring it back inside the IETF.
None of that should be news to you, since I in fact made similar
arguments on the CWG list quite some time ago.

And none of this answers the question, either, of what the correct
long-term arrangement ought to be.  Given the terrible lack of detail,
it's entirely possible that whatever the PTI arrangements end up being
will be unstable and poorly-suited to the long term health of the
relevant registries, even if they are perfectly servicable and useful
for the purposes of transition.  As I've said repeatedly in the CWG
context, we had better be assuming that the arrangement can be altered
again in the future if such needs turn up.  If it cannot, then that
suggests we're doing it wrong.  Practical arrangements should never be
so brittle.

Best regards,

A

-- 
--
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]
Awkward access to mail.  Please forgive formatting problems.