[governance] Vixie supports another root administration (fwd)

[Milton Mueller]

>>> Paul Vixie <paul at vix.com> 10/09/05 9:32 PM >>>
>i'm cc'ing mr. mueller in hopes that he will forward it to the 
>list on my behalf

Done. My reply to your post below.

>If ORSN ever publishes data that did not come originally from 
>IANA, beyond the minor change to the ". NS" RRset needed to 
>make ORSN's project viable at all, then that will probably end 
>my involvement with them.

I understand this distinction quite well. No one is accusing you of
supporting an effort that is attempting to add new TLDs to the root zone
via some process that is outside of and parallel to ICANN's. So, relax.

# ... if the USG abuses its oversight authority and does something to
#the root zone that makes it different, such as throwing Iran's ccTLD
#out of the root zone, will ORSN follow suit?  I suspect (and hope) not.
 #Then you will have a split root.

>then you will have a root nameserver system that's publishing 
>stale IANA data rather than up-to-date IANA data.  

I understand this distinction quite well, too. And you are wrong that
the result is not two distinct name spaces. If up-to-date USG-controlled
IANA data differs from "stale" IANA data, you have a split root. Period.
You know this as well as I.

You would be much more convincing if you would point out that the
existence of this independently-maintained root reduces the chance that
the USG would abuse its oversight over the root zone file to begin with.
It would  basically be a game of chicken in which the threat of a viable
alternate root system capacble of creating a DNS incompatibility
obviously not in everyone's interests would make USG think twice about
doing it.

And that's why I support what you and ORSN are doing. So, relax.

>that ain't the same thing, at all, as a
>split root.  

Wrong. To use my example, a root without .ir, or one in which USG
unilaterally redelegates .ir to someone new, constitutes two different
name spaces, if ORSN doesn't follow suit and sticks to the "stale" data,
you have a DNS incompatibliity.  

Of course that scenario is highly unlikely. But the likelihood of the
scenario is irrelevant to the logical point about the name space. (At
least, I HOPE it is unlikely, but it is not too stupid for some of the
militant idiots running around the Bush administration to contemplate, I
am afraid. If you think otherwise I would suggest that you spend less
time on the West coast and more time in neocon circles in Washington.
And think less of about "Prepcom3 results" and more about the Family
Research Council and .xxx. 

# In essence, Paul Vixie is saying is that he is willing to risk
# splitting the root for defensive, political reasons, and not for
# profit-motivated, economic reasons.

>no.  paul vixie (me) has never said he (i) would split the root.

Except for October 31, 1996, and January 1998....but we won't go into
that ;-)

>there is a world of difference between "one namespace with 
>multiple sets of servers" and "multiple namespaces".  and as 
>anyone who has read this far knows, there is a world of 
>difference between a deliberately stale root zone and an 
>amended root zone.

There is an important difference between what ORSN is doing and what
prior alt.root people did. But if the USG does something that causes
ORSN's root to diverge - and you cannot deny that that possibility is
one of the stated motives of creating ORSN -  from the standpoint of
global namespace compatiblity, the two are not different at all.

>mr. mueller is not the first wisher-for-alternate-roots who has 
>mistaken my support for ORSN as being supportive of their 
>positions, but i hope that the end of that baggage train is near.

Mr. Mueller (me) has never "wished for" alternate roots per se. Mr.
Mueller has as a social scientist insisted that 1) they are possible and
we should talk about them, 2) there could be justifiable reasons for
setting one up, or at least not to make them illegal, and 3) that we
should analyze and understand their economics and in particular the way
they affect DNS compatiblity. I think current events and in particular
your "support" for ORSN have just proven that I was right about 2). Now
if you'd read the rest of my work on the subject, you might find my
contributions around 3) interesting.

>i'm not siding with them.

Your own article said you were "participating" in the Project. You have
publicly associated with them, adding considerably to their visilbity
and credibility. You use the words "helping" and "supporting" them. You
could easily have ignored them, but did not. If you want to say you are
not "siding" with them, it's fine with me, but I suspect this
distinction won't matter to anyone but you. Let's not waste any more
time on semantic debates of that sort, ok?

And hey, I think what you are doing makes a lot of sense. So relax.


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