Re: Moderation on [e-mail]

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 25/07/2014 05:54, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
...

>> Perhaps not quite legendary to those of us who weren't there.  Can you
>> elaborate on the "legendary Kobe event," and why we no longer have an
>> architecture board?
> 
> I was not their either. But here is my interpretation of what was going on.

Interpretation indeed.

> The received version is that the IAB cut a backroom deal with OSI to
> settle the IPv4 address space exhaustion issue with a move to the OSI
> stack. 

I very much doubt that there was a backroom deal; that's conspiracy
theory. For many people, it was actually the obvious thing to do.

> This obviously did not fly with the IETF participants and there
> was a major row. This had three lasting consequences, first any future
> co-operation with OSI was abandoned, 

Not at all. In fact, twenty years minus one week ago, during IETF 30,
after the IPng->IPv6 decision was announced, I sat on a bench alongside
University Ave about three blocks from here, drafting (with pen and
paper) what later became RFC 1888 (OSI NSAPs and IPv6). That was a
direct collaboration between several IETF participants and a couple of
OSI participants (whether they were affiliated with ISO or ITU is
fairly irrelevant). Actually we tried quite hard to maintain good
relations with the OSI community, but they vanished.

> second the NOMCON process was
> invented to address complaints about the lack of influence in the
> management of the organization while making sure that it would remain
> in the hands of the 'right' people and the IAB stopped attempting to
> do architecture.

That is not true. The IAB stopped being responsible for approving
Internet standards; that job was transferred to the IESG. The IAB
still has architecture in its name and its charter. As to what
we mean by "architecture" ... well, that is exactly why the IAB
did RFC 1958 (while I was IAB Chair) and later added language to
the IAB charter (RFC 2850 section 2.1).

> 
> As we all know the IETF has its roots in the ARPANET. At the time of
> Kobe the management of the IETF was dominated by current and former
> DARPA program managers and principal investigators but the membership
> was considerably more diverse. So the Kobe rebellion was really the
> point at which the participants told the management that IETF was not
> going to be an appendage of DARPA any more and threatened to fork the
> IETF if they didn't agree.
> 
> 
> Bringing it back to the current governance issues it might be useful
> to point out that the IETF declared independence from the US
> government back in the 1990s and is already a thoroughly independent
> body that is in practice accountable only to the Internet Society and
> various sugar daddies and that to a limited degree.

Yes, if we were no longer perceived useful by a certain number
of companies, participation and funding would tail off. I'm not
sure we provide the kind of services that sugar daddies normally
expect, however.

     Brian