Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
I actually think IETF might function better if nobody's badge had his company's name on it, and nobody used a company email address. People place way too much importance on someone's employer. Yes, sometimes people break the rules and speak for their employers, but it's not wise to assume that this is the case. As for those who want to acknowledge who pays the travel bills - It doesn't matter who pays the bills. What matters is whether what's being said makes good technical sense. Keith ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
--On Saturday, 06 August, 2005 12:00 +0200 Keith Moore moore@cs.utk.edu wrote: I actually think IETF might function better if nobody's badge had his company's name on it, and nobody used a company email address. People place way too much importance on someone's employer. Yes, sometimes people break the rules and speak for their employers, but it's not wise to assume that this is the case. As for those who want to acknowledge who pays the travel bills - It doesn't matter who pays the bills. What matters is whether what's being said makes good technical sense. Keith, In a more perfect world, I would completely agree with you. In practice, there is a more subtle issue than speaking for their employers which involved avoiding saying things that one's employer would find troublesome. In my experience in IETF and, especially in other standards bodies, it is much more common for a company to say to an employee in general, we don't care what you advocate, but you are not permitted to speak against a position the company has taken or in favor of a position that would hurt one of the company's product plans. FWIW, the main US standards body in the above-physical-infrastructure information technology area responded, something over 30 years ago, to variations on to problem of whether someone was participating as an individual expert or a company representative by making people declare what they were (with a default). Every membership roster for a technical committee or working group would list people in a way that would distinguish between works for Foobar Corporation and represents FooBar Corporation and reflects their views. The strongest push for making the distinction actually came from some of those who were obligated to represent company positions: more than one of them commented in private that if he or she was required to say stupid things, it was good for it to be clear that they were someone's else's opinions.The advantage of that sort of approach is that no one has to lie or pretend they are something they are not. Everyone has to identify explicitly what they are and under what constraints they do (or do not) operate, and then we move on. In or environment, without long-lived rosters and membership lists, we could require periodic disclaimers in email messages (e.g., I am speaking for GreedyCorp here) or make colored badges, or stripes, or...). I am _not_ particularly recommending this, but it is something we might think about as pointing the way to a better plan than let's pretend everyone is acting as an individual and able to speak freely on any topic, even when we know it isn't always true. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
On 6-aug-2005, at 12:00, Keith Moore wrote: I actually think IETF might function better if nobody's badge had his company's name on it, and nobody used a company email address. That assumes that someone's company is irrelevant to their viewpoints. I don't think this is generally true in practice (depends on the company and the person, of course), and I don't see why it necessarily should be either. (If I were to send someone to the IETF on my dime I'd sure want them to stick up for my interests to a reasonable degree.) So in the interest of full disclosure, people's affiliations should be easy to discover. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
I think the companies deserve a minimal amount of recognition for supporting our participation. And our place in the world informs our perspectives. That is why it is common in the routing discussions to have the question how many people in this room are operators? We want their perspective. Yours, Joel M. Halpern At 06:00 AM 8/6/2005, Keith Moore wrote: I actually think IETF might function better if nobody's badge had his company's name on it, and nobody used a company email address. People place way too much importance on someone's employer. Yes, sometimes people break the rules and speak for their employers, but it's not wise to assume that this is the case. As for those who want to acknowledge who pays the travel bills - It doesn't matter who pays the bills. What matters is whether what's being said makes good technical sense. Keith ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Effecting major infrastructure change RE: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
On 3-aug-2005, at 16:09, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote: For the cases where there is a major infrastructure change that needs to be achieved I would like to see a more interactive process. At present the development model is a bunch of boffins go out into a shed, build something and then ask the customer if they like it. This process has not really worked for IPv6 or DNSSEC and I don't think it is likely to work for BGPSecurity either. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a better way to do it. (Having a new standard imposed by the government would be more efficient, but still not better.) What kind of trouble are you expecting with BGP security, by the way? One problem here is that there is no way that any shed is ever going to be big enough to fit in all the parties that might have a stake in the outcome. That's a feature. The people are in the shed to brainstorm or work out boring but important details. Neither of those work in groups that are big enough encompass all possible stakeholders. The people in the shed don't automatically get consensus, they have to convince the larger group that their work has merit. So when they come up with something bad, they've mostly wasted their own time and know better in the future. Rather than treating the inputs from other organizations as individual contributions I would like to see groups that have major infrastructure change have a process available for formally soliciting input from the various consortia where the stakeholders whose participation is essential tend to meet. Sounds an awful lot like the way ICANN does things. Although this way of doing things allows for additional decisiveness, it also adds a lot of contention after the fact. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
Hi, Philip, Our mileages probably vary (welcome to the IETF, variable mileage is how we know we're here!), but ... In the working group chair training, we point out that the most important thing working group chairs do, and the only responsibility they can't delegate, is declaration of working group consensus. Call me a dreamer, but if there's one voice (which may or may not be from another planet) in a working group, the chair's responsibility is to decide if this is one of the hopefully rare cases where one voice SHOULD derail apparent consensus, and if it's not - to say so! I understand the apparent advantage of saying, well, if X says it's a good idea, X is from a large ISP, so they are probably right, but this doesn't prevent the second-order problem that large companies (ISPs or not) have a range of employee IQs, and if you defer to one of the low-order IQs because they work for Y, you may STILL end up in a bad place. I've seen this bad place personally. I would hope that we evaluate ideas based on the message in most cases, and not on the messenger. If that's not what we do in most cases, I THINK this is a pretty fundamental change in how the IETF works. Spencer From: Hallam-Baker, Phillip [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: IETF General Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 2:55 AM Subject: RE: I'm not the microphone police, but ... There are cases where it is useful for a group to be able to take notice of first hand experience that comes from employment. For example I am currently reading a somewhat sureal thread in which an individual who clearly has no experience or understanding of running network operations for a large ISP (million plus customers) is lecturing folk on the lack of scalability of a protocol proposed by and already deployed by several ISPs of that type of scale. Another issue that frequently comes up is that people will assert that a proposal to make a new use of DNS will increase load on the system and thus risk bringing down core DNS and thus the Internet. Except in cases where the protocol is catastrophically bad and unnecessarily wasteful of resources these dire predictions have never yet proved true, nor are they likely to - most load on the core DNS is due to attacks and baddly configured DNS systems. Even if the load on the core DNS were to increase the point of the infrastructure is to serve the needs of users, not the other way around. The point I am trying to make here is that we are not dealing with a domain that is entirely academic theory. There are cases where operational experience is significant and affiliation can carry significance. If I hear several major infrastructure providers say that they have examined a proposal and the resource requirements do not cause them concern as far as their operations go I think it is reasonable to give such a statement considerable weight unless there are very good reasons to think otherwise. Likewise I would take a concern raised by several major infrastructure providers that a proposal did have unacceptable resource requirements very seriously, although I would want to see some documentation and explanation of the claim. We do not need to give a veto to major infrastructure providers but there has to be a mechanism that allows companies to raise issues on the record from time to time when they choose. If only to avoid the need to argue at interminable length why a 'scalability issue' is nothing of the sort. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
my 2 cents as well: And whether or not people mention their affiliate at the mic is a much smaller issue IMO to whether they use their company email account. That is a much more visible and relevant label in IETF work that mostly happens on mailing lists anyway. I believe that its good to avoid conflicts of interest, or the perceptions of it. Note that I am using a personal address on this, so I'm happy to speak freely, and this following this list is really not related to my day-job. However, on mailing lists / WGs where my employer is interested in my work on the subject, I use the email address provided by my employer, just so that folks know that my responses might be 'colored' somewhat ... John ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
Well, the one that really pushes my button is when someone, probably a vendor, but even sometimes an operator, comes to the mic and says The Really Big SDO needs this work. Its impossible to know if this person has any official standing at the Really Big SDO, or if it is a possition that that person would just wish that SDO would take. John Two related points here - one is that we do have official liasions on the IAB website (at http://www.iab.org/liaisons/index.html), so it is theoretically possible to identify these liasions, but not everyone knows about this, and not everyone thinks to look, and the second is that a number of interesting communities don't have an official liasion to/from the IETF, so John's statement very clearly applies in these cases. These communities may not even be SDOs - they can be operator consortia, vendor consortia, industry consortia, or Lord knows what. When I was attending 3GPP, Stephen Hayes was the official liasion, and in my experience he was VERY conservative about saying this is what 3GPP needs/wants/expects. Not everyone who stands at the microphone is as consciencious as Stephen. I was in one working group meeting yesterday where two people were arguing about the timeframe an external SDO really expects from the IETF - that's not helpful to the IETF or to the external SDO (who may get what it wants from the IETF, or what someone thought it should want). Thanks, Spencer ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
Spencer Dawkins wrote: That would be fine, if I changed the Newcomer's Orientation :-) That computes. Brian Spencer Spencer, However, many people here are not using their 'individual money' to get here in Paris. Our name badges list our employers (in most cases). I think its a different issue if I come to the mic and say, 'We at the ACME company would like to state, for the record, that we support the foo bar proposal and hope it becomes an official RFC as soon as possible. It doesn't bug me one-way or another if folks state their name who pays the bills. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
At 09:11 03/08/2005, Spencer Dawkins wrote: Hi, Philip, Our mileages probably vary (welcome to the IETF, variable mileage is how we know we're here!), but ... In the working group chair training, we point out that the most important thing working group chairs do, and the only responsibility they can't delegate, is declaration of working group consensus. Call me a dreamer, but if there's one voice (which may or may not be from another planet) in a working group, the chair's responsibility is to decide if this is one of the hopefully rare cases where one voice SHOULD derail apparent consensus, and if it's not - to say so! I understand the apparent advantage of saying, well, if X says it's a good idea, X is from a large ISP, so they are probably right, but this doesn't prevent the second-order problem that large companies (ISPs or not) have a range of employee IQs, and if you defer to one of the low-order IQs because they work for Y, you may STILL end up in a bad place. I've seen this bad place personally. I would hope that we evaluate ideas based on the message in most cases, and not on the messenger. If that's not what we do in most cases, I THINK this is a pretty fundamental change in how the IETF works. Spencer, the problem may also be that a WG is set-up to derail the opposition of a few individuals on a matter they know better. In that case the simple exposure of the business relations of the affinity group having proposed the WG shows that we may face a planet war. IMHO your IQ point could also be considered the other way around. One of the problem identified by RFC 3774 is the increasing number of standard participants. I am sure large corporations would be more careful at sending their high-order IQ if they known that their inputs will tagged with the company name. The worst thing I ever read in an IETF mail is you oppose him: do you know who he is?. I think we should help the coporations of the authors of such mails to filter them out. BTW an interesting debate we had over multilingualism is that every IETF Member should disclose his IQ. ... at least the difference between his IQ tested in his mother tongue and in English, or between in English and in his best foreign tongue. jfc ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
I am sure large corporations would be more careful at sending their high-order IQ if they known that their inputs will tagged with the company name. What a wonderful world it would be, if that were true... I'm pretty sure that less than 0.001 percent of the management teams at my IETF sponsors since 1996 had any idea that I was even ATTENDING the IETF, and our process documents point out repeatedly that it's not necessary to actually attend IETF face-to-face meetings in order to participate in the IETF. My current sponsor is quite clear that I am, and will be, participating in the IETF, but that's not true for most of the people I talk to on IETF mailing lists. It's quite possible to be an excellent document editor, and probably even a reasonable working group chair, with very minimal sponsor awareness. I've paid my own way to IETFs twice, both times as WG/BOF chairs, and I know that others have paid their own way many more times than I have. If an employee doesn't fill out a travel authorization to attend the face to face meetings, does anyone on the management team even hear this tree fall? Spencer ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Personal company email addresses (Re: Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...)
--On 3. august 2005 12:53 +0300 John Loughney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: my 2 cents as well: And whether or not people mention their affiliate at the mic is a much smaller issue IMO to whether they use their company email account. That is a much more visible and relevant label in IETF work that mostly happens on mailing lists anyway. I believe that its good to avoid conflicts of interest, or the perceptions of it. Note that I am using a personal address on this, so I'm happy to speak freely, and this following this list is really not related to my day-job. However, on mailing lists / WGs where my employer is interested in my work on the subject, I use the email address provided by my employer, just so that folks know that my responses might be 'colored' somewhat ... I use my personal email for IETF work, and expect to continue to do so; at the time I started with Cisco, the email disk quota on my company account would support my incoming email for 5 1/2 days, so that was really no alternative. I've been surprised that some people STILL don't know who I work for, after 5 years at the same employer.. but that's life. Harald ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
From: John C Klensin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] At the risk of providing an irritating counterexample or two... Please explain this to almost every wireless carrier in the world, especially those offering 3G or similar Internet-based data services. Established actors, significant stake in the Internet, but business models based on walled gardens. A discussion with, e.g., AOL, might also be of interest.These are, I would suggest, established companies and fairly significant market actors. I have a Palm device on Cingular and a HP iPaq on T-Mobile, both are unrestricted. I also have a bunch of walled garden 'imode' phones where I have only accessed the Web browser by accident. Walled garden does not seem to me to be a very successful business model. It means customers have little content available to them. I think that is self correcting. I know that in the MBA business courses they wax lyrical about 'razor and blades' business models. Fact is though that most attempts to establish that model artificially fail. Ink jet cartriges and video game consoles are the main exceptions. People understand the lock in effect, in most cases they try to avoid it. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
Spencer Dawkins wrote: Well, the one that really pushes my button is when someone, probably a vendor, but even sometimes an operator, comes to the mic and says The Really Big SDO needs this work. Its impossible to know if this person has any official standing at the Really Big SDO, or if it is a possition that that person would just wish that SDO would take. John Two related points here - one is that we do have official liasions on the IAB website (at http://www.iab.org/liaisons/index.html), so it is theoretically possible to identify these liasions, but not everyone knows about this, and not everyone thinks to look, and the second is that a number of interesting communities don't have an official liasion to/from the IETF, so John's statement very clearly applies in these cases. How SDO inputs should be taken into account in our standards process is indeed undefined and IMHO needs to be defined. These communities may not even be SDOs - they can be operator consortia, vendor consortia, industry consortia, or Lord knows what. Ah, but those we can simply treat as individual contributions, because there is no reason to do otherwise. When I was attending 3GPP, Stephen Hayes was the official liasion, and in my experience he was VERY conservative about saying this is what 3GPP needs/wants/expects. Not everyone who stands at the microphone is as consciencious as Stephen. I was in one working group meeting yesterday where two people were arguing about the timeframe an external SDO really expects from the IETF - that's not helpful to the IETF or to the external SDO (who may get what it wants from the IETF, or what someone thought it should want). And this is the undefined case. Brian ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
Behalf Of Spencer Dawkins Call me a dreamer, but if there's one voice (which may or may not be from another planet) in a working group, the chair's responsibility is to decide if this is one of the hopefully rare cases where one voice SHOULD derail apparent consensus, and if it's not - to say so! The problem I was thinking of was more of the pre-consensus type. Where you have one or two persons banging on ad-nauseam claiming that a proposal is going to cripple large ISPs, one or two people from those large ISPs saying 'that is not a problem' and a lot of folk who don't want to comment on the issue because they don't feel they understand it. I think that when you are talking about alleged show stopper issues you have to take into account the affiliations of the people raising the issues if you are going to arrive at a deployable spec in a timely manner. I understand the apparent advantage of saying, well, if X says it's a good idea, X is from a large ISP, so they are probably right, but this doesn't prevent the second-order problem that large companies (ISPs or not) have a range of employee IQs, and if you defer to one of the low-order IQs because they work for Y, you may STILL end up in a bad place. I've seen this bad place personally. That depends on the nature of the show stopper. If the product manager for Yahoo mail says that an issue that has been raised by others as a show stopper for large installations is not a problem and nobody else in a similar position contradicts them then I tend to think that its their funeral if they turn out to be wrong. If on the other hand you have the CTO, VP of Research and Principal Scientist of a major Internet infrastructure company all saying that there is a major show stopper for them and that they won't be able to deploy for several years unless there is a change, I think a group really needs to be able to take the source of the objection into account. I would hope that we evaluate ideas based on the message in most cases, and not on the messenger. If that's not what we do in most cases, I THINK this is a pretty fundamental change in how the IETF works. I agree this is so in most cases. The problem is that the system does not provide a mechanism for the occasional exception that may be needed. The approach that I have seen be most effective in bringing about infrastructure changes in the Internet has been to get the major stakeholders around a table and get them to put on record their criteria for adoption of some new infrastructure. One model would be to hold such meetings under IETF aegis, another would be to do as was done for email authentication and hold a series of meetings in a range of forums in the hope that the requirements would somehow trickle down to the working group. The first approach would be a major change to the IETF, the second approach may be the reason for various countries complaining that they are effectively excluded from the Internet Governance process. The ad hoc groups very rarely extend beyond North America and when they do it is often only to include other parts of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Effecting major infrastructure change RE: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
Behalf Of Brian E Carpenter These communities may not even be SDOs - they can be operator consortia, vendor consortia, industry consortia, or Lord knows what. Ah, but those we can simply treat as individual contributions, because there is no reason to do otherwise. For the cases where there is a major infrastructure change that needs to be achieved I would like to see a more interactive process. At present the development model is a bunch of boffins go out into a shed, build something and then ask the customer if they like it. This process has not really worked for IPv6 or DNSSEC and I don't think it is likely to work for BGPSecurity either. One problem here is that there is no way that any shed is ever going to be big enough to fit in all the parties that might have a stake in the outcome. Rather than treating the inputs from other organizations as individual contributions I would like to see groups that have major infrastructure change have a process available for formally soliciting input from the various consortia where the stakeholders whose participation is essential tend to meet. As with any focus group there can never be an expectation that the eventual solution will meet all of the requirements, but even if it does not people prefer to be asked than ignored. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
At 14:16 03/08/2005, Spencer Dawkins wrote: I am sure large corporations would be more careful at sending their high-order IQ if they known that their inputs will tagged with the company name. What a wonderful world it would be, if that were true... I'm pretty sure that less than 0.001 percent of the management teams at my IETF sponsors since 1996 had any idea that I was even ATTENDING the IETF, and our process documents point out repeatedly that it's not necessary to actually attend IETF face-to-face meetings in order to participate in the IETF. My current sponsor is quite clear that I am, and will be, participating in the IETF, but that's not true for most of the people I talk to on IETF mailing lists. It's quite possible to be an excellent document editor, and probably even a reasonable working group chair, with very minimal sponsor awareness. I've paid my own way to IETFs twice, both times as WG/BOF chairs, and I know that others have paid their own way many more times than I have. If an employee doesn't fill out a travel authorization to attend the face to face meetings, does anyone on the management team even hear this tree fall? Spencer, I am afraid we are not on the same wavelength. We all did what you say. But there is a time when you set up your priority budget. Attending the IETF is the cost of a test server I need to oppose running tested code to people using the IETF against our non-profit RD for their own profit. I would have no problem with their agenda, if the simple disclosing of their roots made heir legitimate commercial relations known and obvious to all, leading the community to be less impressed by the size of their Draft and more attentive to its real interest, for who. I am considering the seldom cases which counts. Where Sponsors are really able to use the IETF, and the IANA, as a tool to protect their own interests, biasing the Internet standard process. In this case the strategy is not managed by a sponsor but through a consortium or a de facto alliance. The management is informed and is in the lead. I think it is not often (I know directly only three cases), but it is where the real danger is: because the Internet architecture is not separately discussed. So, it may be decided for long through small committing details (I know from experience). This is the case where RFC 3869 describes the Internet RD financing by commercial interests: controlling that small committing detail is of key importance before investing. Then the investment will in turn commit the internet to the concerned interests. In the three cases I refered to one is a failure, one is important but less than it could have been, the last one is just being carried. In these cases you have two or three geeks/managers involving themselves, to show who is the boss when needed. Then you have well educated specialised set of people, to author Drafts, co-Chair the WG, assume complementary Draft preparation, manage the IANA registry, etc. Then you have standard Members to sustain the consensus (by exhaustion) and to erode opposition to that end. The game is not to produce the best document for all, but to win against competition's propositions. Leading to the fun of seeing an intended BCP (as a successor to an RFC also dealing with Internet standard process issues) to invent a standard track proposition forbidding existing practices and running code. I submit that publishing the resume of all the participants and the source of their IETF funding would help everyone understand these cases and would reduce them to welcome (but probably less staffed and funded) standard propositions. Commercial money cannot be dealt with the same as public money, as non-profit money, as personal money. Or you unbalance the whole process. jfc ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
- Original Message - From: Spencer Dawkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: IETF General Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 2:16 PM Subject: Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ... I am sure large corporations would be more careful at sending their high-order IQ if they known that their inputs will tagged with the company name. What a wonderful world it would be, if that were true... I'm pretty sure that less than 0.001 percent of the management teams at my IETF sponsors since 1996 had any idea that I was even ATTENDING the IETF, and our process documents point out repeatedly that it's not necessary to actually attend IETF face-to-face meetings in order to participate in the IETF. My current sponsor is quite clear that I am, and will be, participating in the IETF, but that's not true for most of the people I talk to on IETF mailing lists. It's quite possible to be an excellent document editor, and probably even a reasonable working group chair, with very minimal sponsor awareness. I've paid my own way to IETFs twice, both times as WG/BOF chairs, and I know that others have paid their own way many more times than I have. If an employee doesn't fill out a travel authorization to attend the face to face meetings, does anyone on the management team even hear this tree fall? Spencer My own experience of a large organisation heavily involved in networking was that being sent to Paris or London or Japan or ... was given as a reward to someone in the networking arena who had performed well against their objectives for the previous year. Prior knowledge, skill, ability to contribute were not a consideration except insofar as they formed part of those objectives. Of course, others could take annual leave and fund it themselves - wish I had. Tom Petch ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
At 17:22 01/08/2005, Spencer Dawkins wrote: That would be fine, if I changed the Newcomer's Orientation :-) Spencer Spencer, However, many people here are not using their 'individual money' to get here in Paris. Our name badges list our employers (in most cases). I think its a different issue if I come to the mic and say, 'We at the ACME company would like to state, for the record, that we support the foo bar proposal and hope it becomes an official RFC as soon as possible. It doesn't bug me one-way or another if folks state their name who pays the bills. Spencer, I do not claim that my technical positions are correct, but that they are independent and I pretend they prove that IETF is what it claims: by individuals. I pay dearly that independence for years (which has many other RD advantages). This permits me, may be clumsily but loyally, to support for free the interests of open-source, of small industries, of developing countries, of a user-centric architecture. So, what is sad is when I am asked by an IETF establishment member do you realise how much you _cost_ to the industry?. Which industry? Not mine in any case. Fostering competition is not favoring my competition. This is why I suggest the real danger for the IETF is the collusion of large organisations through external consortia to get a market dominance through de facto excluding IETF standardisation and IANA registry control. And this is why I suggest the best way to address it is simply to ask for the truth, the whole truth. Participation should be individual, but published details should include who foots the costs, the corporation, the relevant consortia and main customers for consultants. We need everyone, including commercial consortia, individual searchers, non-profits, Government, Academic projects, etc., but, please read RFC 3869, on a equal participation opportunity basis. This is the only way to obtain open, scalable and uniform standards. I live nearby the Palais des Congrès. But I do not come since I am not invited for free by IASA as we are invited by ICANN. The IETF policy must be consistent: there is no reason to pay personal money to help interests I defend to be treated unequal, due to often disclosed but non published affinities. They get there far more than what they pay for, why would I in addition subsidise them? jfc ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
Behalf Of JFC (Jefsey) Morfin This is why I suggest the real danger for the IETF is the collusion of large organisations through external consortia to get a market dominance through de facto excluding IETF standardisation and IANA registry control. And this is why I suggest the best way to address it is simply to ask for the truth, the whole truth. The problem with this approach is that it becomes self-defeating. The work of the IETF gets clogged up by individuals whose sole objective is to block what they see as the encroachments of evil corporations at all costs. Even if they can't see the evil globalization scheme immediately they will block progress anyway just in case. The result is that corporations that want to get work done either go to other forums or craft proposals that are so narrowly drafted that they amount to a rubber stamp. Certainly there are bizare corporations attempting to achieve some sort of stranglehold. Anyone remember digital convergence and the CueCat? That type of behavior tends to come from market entrants rather than established companies. Once you have a stake in the open Internet the probability of success in a closed 'walled garden' scheme isn't high enough to be interesting. Furthermore the people working for those corporations tend to consider themselves advocates for and responsible to their customers and their customer's customers at least as much if not more than their shareholders. Sit at the back of the plenary sessions. Watch the number of people opening up their laptop and starting a telnet session. Less than 5% of the billion plus Internet users interact with their machine in that way. The IETF membership is totally unrepresentative of the billion plus Internet users. Worse still the prevaling attitude is of the 'anyone can become like us only not quite so skilled' type. Most people don't want to have to become computer experts. The IETF does not have a veto over the development of the Internet. There are plenty of standards organizations to choose from. Nor for that matter does IANA. All IANA is is a voluntary arrangement that exists because people choose to recognize it. There is in practice nothing to stop individuals simply declaring that they will use a particular code point. As a thought experiment consider what happens if someone decides they want the DNS RR 88 and just goes and uses it. If they succeed and their standard is used nobody else is going to accept issue of RR #88. And that is all anyone needs from IANA. This total lack of control is actually not such a bad thing. It means that if the International 'Internet Governance' cabal that wants to capture the IANA were to succeed the success it would not matter very much. This is the only way to obtain open, scalable and uniform standards. Are these the right goals? Surely meeting the needs of the users should come somewhere in the list. Uniformity in standards can be a good thing. But there are also disadvantages to insisting on 'consistency' with what are at this point quarter century old designs. Ten years ago I would have thought that the idea of 'disposable' standards whose sole purpose was to effect a transition to some other standard was mad. Today I really don't see any problem with the idea that you write a spec whose sole purpose is to enable a transition. It is pretty hard for any standard to get anywhere unless it is 'open'. It is not exactly in my employer's interest to allow a competitor to gain such a position. Nor is it in my competitor's interest to allow me to achieve such a position. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
At 16:23 02/08/2005, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote: Behalf Of JFC (Jefsey) Morfin This is why I suggest the real danger for the IETF is the collusion of large organisations through external consortia to get a market dominance through de facto excluding IETF standardisation and IANA registry control. And this is why I suggest the best way to address it is simply to ask for the truth, the whole truth. Hallam, I still must answer you very cute remark on what one could name delta sec. I am giving a lot of thinking. I find it very interesting. So I will be careful about this one :-) The problem with this approach is that it becomes self-defeating. The work of the IETF gets clogged up by individuals whose sole objective is to block what they see as the encroachments of evil corporations at all costs. This is unfortunately what I must do right now. But unfortunately this is not what I see, it is what they demonstrate. Even if they can't see the evil globalization scheme immediately they will block progress anyway just in case. The result is that corporations that want to get work done either go to other forums or craft proposals that are so narrowly drafted that they amount to a rubber stamp. Except if you can grab a BCP. I am not sure you are actually right. You certainly know a few cases. I known one before: I actually partly oppose your company. I gave up as it was my first IETF opposition. Today I see that it would have been tremendously beneficiary to your company if I had hold my position. The problem with IETF is there is no architectural common vision. So you do not know if your rubber stamp is at the proper place. This is why would prefer to have a good evaluation of all the interests supporting a proposition. Having to road map, I could at least understand who supports. If there is a good distribution of support, this is good. If there is only a commercial, or a political, etc. support: warning. This is simply some more sophisticated rough consensus evaluation process. Avoiding consensus by exhaustion organised by affinity groups. Certainly there are bizare corporations attempting to achieve some sort of stranglehold. Anyone remember digital convergence and the CueCat? That type of behavior tends to come from market entrants rather than established companies. Once you have a stake in the open Internet the probability of success in a closed 'walled garden' scheme isn't high enough to be interesting. Unless you are dominant and want to protect that dominance. Furthermore the people working for those corporations tend to consider themselves advocates for and responsible to their customers and their customer's customers at least as much if not more than their shareholders. dominance makes this the same. You have so many customers that their stability seems to be part of the internet. But dominance in an area can be defeated by dominance or greassroots effort in an area which looked orthogonal. The problem is that it may create disruption. Look at Internet balkanisation. Sit at the back of the plenary sessions. Watch the number of people opening up their laptop and starting a telnet session. Less than 5% of the billion plus Internet users interact with their machine in that way. The IETF membership is totally unrepresentative of the billion plus Internet users. Worse still the prevaling attitude is of the 'anyone can become like us only not quite so skilled' type. Most people don't want to have to become computer experts. The IETF does not have a veto over the development of the Internet. There are plenty of standards organizations to choose from. Nor for that matter does IANA. All IANA is is a voluntary arrangement that exists because people choose to recognize it. There is in practice nothing to stop individuals simply declaring that they will use a particular code point. IETF and IANA have a defacto monopoly on the architecture. This architecture must evoluate for years. This only lead to the question: will they make it or who will? Two responses today: ITU or grassroots. If someone believes the ITU is able to do it so it is grassroots. But grassroots is balkanisation, starting by the dominant securing their dominant territory. And grassroots undermining it. This has good and bad effect. At this time I have not yet determined the best way out of IETF. As a thought experiment consider what happens if someone decides they want the DNS RR 88 and just goes and uses it. If they succeed and their standard is used nobody else is going to accept issue of RR #88. And that is all anyone needs from IANA. This total lack of control is actually not such a bad thing. It means that if the International 'Internet Governance' cabal that wants to capture the IANA were to succeed the success it would not matter very much. The IANA time is over. The problem is its consistent replacement. This is the only way to obtain open, scalable and uniform
RE: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
From: JFC (Jefsey) Morfin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Except if you can grab a BCP. I am not sure you are actually right. You certainly know a few cases. The lack of an IETF endorsed spec from MARID did not stop Microsoft from holding an industry gala two weeks ago in NYC. Nobody commented or appeared to care that the spec was not ratified. Think of it as a recess appointment. The problem with IETF is there is no architectural common vision. No, that is its strength. The Web was not part of the IETF common vision. SSL was diametrically opposed to the IETF security vision. IETF and IANA have a defacto monopoly on the architecture. No they don't. W3C and OASIS are both more influential as standards bodies at this point, particularly once we get above the session layer. The URI identifier architecture introduced in PICS and since adopted in XML eliminates the need for fixed registries like the IANA. That was the whole point, to eliminate the control point. I did not want a central registry of PICS censorship schemes. Of course other people did, mostly the people who used euphemisms like 'content selection' rather than censorship. For example the whole IPv6 issue is that they did not understand that their current deployement (2001) is disposable. The failure to get the deployment stakeholders round the table to ask the question 'what will it take to make this happen' is in my view the root cause. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
My 2 cents: I firmly believe in the individual and voluntary aspects of IETF attendance. I also belong to both categories; sure my employer pays for the expenses, but nobody forced me to come over. (Come on it's Paris after all, although I have gone to all of the Minneapolis meetings, too. ;) I represent many things here -- first and foremost I'm an engineer and an end user. Naturally, my interests may be affected by what I do in my real work. I think that applies to most people here, and I think it would be naive to think otherwise. And whether or not people mention their affiliate at the mic is a much smaller issue IMO to whether they use their company email account. That is a much more visible and relevant label in IETF work that mostly happens on mailing lists anyway. Cheers, Aki ext Spencer Dawkins wrote: That would be fine, if I changed the Newcomer's Orientation :-) Spencer Spencer, However, many people here are not using their 'individual money' to get here in Paris. Our name badges list our employers (in most cases). I think its a different issue if I come to the mic and say, 'We at the ACME company would like to state, for the record, that we support the foo bar proposal and hope it becomes an official RFC as soon as possible. It doesn't bug me one-way or another if folks state their name who pays the bills. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
There are cases where it is useful for a group to be able to take notice of first hand experience that comes from employment. For example I am currently reading a somewhat sureal thread in which an individual who clearly has no experience or understanding of running network operations for a large ISP (million plus customers) is lecturing folk on the lack of scalability of a protocol proposed by and already deployed by several ISPs of that type of scale. Another issue that frequently comes up is that people will assert that a proposal to make a new use of DNS will increase load on the system and thus risk bringing down core DNS and thus the Internet. Except in cases where the protocol is catastrophically bad and unnecessarily wasteful of resources these dire predictions have never yet proved true, nor are they likely to - most load on the core DNS is due to attacks and baddly configured DNS systems. Even if the load on the core DNS were to increase the point of the infrastructure is to serve the needs of users, not the other way around. The point I am trying to make here is that we are not dealing with a domain that is entirely academic theory. There are cases where operational experience is significant and affiliation can carry significance. If I hear several major infrastructure providers say that they have examined a proposal and the resource requirements do not cause them concern as far as their operations go I think it is reasonable to give such a statement considerable weight unless there are very good reasons to think otherwise. Likewise I would take a concern raised by several major infrastructure providers that a proposal did have unacceptable resource requirements very seriously, although I would want to see some documentation and explanation of the claim. We do not need to give a veto to major infrastructure providers but there has to be a mechanism that allows companies to raise issues on the record from time to time when they choose. If only to avoid the need to argue at interminable length why a 'scalability issue' is nothing of the sort. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
Interesting: I like you piercing spirit. But, I am afraid you are too much legacy intoxicated :-) what I think surprising. I suppose we agree but you have odd ways of seeing it. At 18:58 02/08/2005, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote: From: JFC (Jefsey) Morfin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Except if you can grab a BCP. I am not sure you are actually right. You certainly know a few cases. The lack of an IETF endorsed spec from MARID did not stop Microsoft from holding an industry gala two weeks ago in NYC. Nobody commented or appeared to care that the spec was not ratified. Think of it as a recess appointment. The problem with IETF is there is no architectural common vision. No, that is its strength. The Web was not part of the IETF common vision. SSL was diametrically opposed to the IETF security vision. I am afraid you speak of details. These are applications. There is no common vision of the reality of the digital ecosystem nature. IETF has fun over layer 8 and 9. Layer 8 to 12 have a precise meaning, as has layer 0. Sharing this meaning would help a common analysis and avoid confusing Multilingual Internet with a bunch of typewritters, using typographer ISO tables to document it. IETF and IANA have a defacto monopoly on the architecture. No they don't. W3C and OASIS are both more influential as standards bodies at this point, particularly once we get above the session layer. Again you speak of details. Of applications. I am speaking of the network architecture. The evolution of the architecture is very very slow. What I say is that in the real world, users are not interested in all that. This is for application providers and applications are decided by the users. Who known the W3C and SGML 10 years ago. Will we still know them 10 years from now? The URI identifier architecture introduced in PICS and since adopted in XML eliminates the need for fixed registries like the IANA. That was the whole point, to eliminate the control point. I did not want a central registry of PICS censorship schemes. Of course other people did, mostly the people who used euphemisms like 'content selection' rather than censorship. Agree. But IMHO this is a way to introduce at application level the very basic root name principle introduced by Robert Tréhin and Joe Rinde in 1977 which founded the International Network, in part the OSI and defaulted to root with the Internet defaulting its architectural parameter to mono from multiple in Tymnet and from separated in OSI. This is what we have to correct now. I would phrase it another way. The IANA is one of the many roots in the International Network forest. But that trunc of that root hidden the forest. The Multilingual Internet is probably the best application to force and fund the necessary effort to look at the forests. But some suspect that the resulting user-centric architecture (each one having its many roots) has a different economical model. And status quo is the best target for dominant one. At ICANN they use to call the stakeholders For example the whole IPv6 issue is that they did not understand that their current deployement (2001) is disposable. The failure to get the deployment stakeholders round the table to ask the question 'what will it take to make this happen' is in my view the root cause. I do not. Because what will make it to happen is the disappearance of stakeholders. Let understand, the current network is made of people who want to organise, to sell, etc. it. The future stable IPv6 network by nature (it would not be an evolution otherwise) will be made of people wanting just want to use it. And the first thing they want to get rid of is the artificial limitations of the stakeholders. Take care. I am quite interested in your security factor in relations. Did you work on that (I did not recall exactly how you termed it: we called delta sec, and people grab the idea quick). I suppose that network security could be discussed in a similar way to network value? jfc ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
--On Tuesday, August 02, 2005 07:23 -0700 Hallam-Baker, Phillip [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Certainly there are bizare corporations attempting to achieve some sort of stranglehold. Anyone remember digital convergence and the CueCat? That type of behavior tends to come from market entrants rather than established companies. Once you have a stake in the open Internet the probability of success in a closed 'walled garden' scheme isn't high enough to be interesting. At the risk of providing an irritating counterexample or two... Please explain this to almost every wireless carrier in the world, especially those offering “3G” or similar Internet-based data services. Established actors, significant stake in the Internet, but business models based on walled gardens. A discussion with, e.g., AOL, might also be of interest.These are, I would suggest, established companies and fairly significant market actors. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
I'm not the microphone police, but ...
From RFC 2418 section 1 ... Participation is by individual technical contributors, rather than by formal representatives of organizations. It seems like we're being especially casual about saying, I'm Waldo from Walden Pond Networks, and ... or even I'm giving you the requirements from the Grand Order of Network Water Buffaloes, and I'm still telling people in the Newcomer's Orientation that we attend as individuals. Could we be a little more careful about saying things that make us sound like other standards organizations? Thanks! Spencer ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
Spencer, However, many people here are not using their 'individual money' to get here in Paris. Our name badges list our employers (in most cases). I think its a different issue if I come to the mic and say, 'We at the ACME company would like to state, for the record, that we support the foo bar proposal and hope it becomes an official RFC as soon as possible. It doesn't bug me one-way or another if folks state their name who pays the bills. John From: Spencer Dawkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2005/08/01 Mon PM 05:44:54 EEST To: IETF General Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Subject: I'm not the microphone police, but ... From RFC 2418 section 1 ... Participation is by individual technical contributors, rather than by formal representatives of organizations. It seems like we're being especially casual about saying, I'm Waldo from Walden Pond Networks, and ... or even I'm giving you the requirements from the Grand Order of Network Water Buffaloes, and I'm still telling people in the Newcomer's Orientation that we attend as individuals. Could we be a little more careful about saying things that make us sound like other standards organizations? Thanks! Spencer ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
That would be fine, if I changed the Newcomer's Orientation :-) Spencer Spencer, However, many people here are not using their 'individual money' to get here in Paris. Our name badges list our employers (in most cases). I think its a different issue if I come to the mic and say, 'We at the ACME company would like to state, for the record, that we support the foo bar proposal and hope it becomes an official RFC as soon as possible. It doesn't bug me one-way or another if folks state their name who pays the bills. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: I'm not the microphone police, but ...
Well, there is another interesting requirement. Many people think stating who you work for is a kind of Full Disclosure statement. I work for foo - there for any statements about protocol bar should be taken through a filter of what company foo is doing. I usually state my current affiliation just so people know when I have changed jobs (what you aren't at Intel any more - Nope left there 4 years ago... Now I am working at McAfee) especially since I prefer to use a personal address that I can track across any company I work for. Bill That would be fine, if I changed the Newcomer's Orientation :-) Spencer Spencer, However, many people here are not using their 'individual money' to get here in Paris. Our name badges list our employers (in most cases). I think its a different issue if I come to the mic and say, 'We at the ACME company would like to state, for the record, that we support the foo bar proposal and hope it becomes an official RFC as soon as possible. It doesn't bug me one-way or another if folks state their name who pays the bills. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
