[governance] another interesting IG piece in Forbes

parminder parminder at itforchange.net
Thu Jan 26 05:39:23 EST 2012


On Thursday 26 January 2012 03:00 PM, Ian Peter wrote:
> Trouble is, Parminder, that with Microsoft's dominance of operating 
> systems at that time (over 10 years ago), any spam solution without 
> them on board was a waste of time.
>
> But the trouble also was, the spam solutions they were prepared to 
> accept were also a waste of time...
>
> That's politics, and there are lots of examples of this sort of 
> useless compromise to bring everyone on board in all areas of 
> politics, both before and after and with or without multistakeholderism.
>
> My point is that pretending IETF is above politics is simply not true.

Ian, I do understand that you were pointing to a specific fact. My mail 
was not directed against your views. I just took the opportunity to 
reassert my issues with a certain kind of governance model... parminder
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From: *parminder <parminder at itforchange.net>
> *Reply-To: *<governance at lists.igcaucus.org>, parminder 
> <parminder at itforchange.net>
> *Date: *Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:29:32 +0530
> *To: *<governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
> *Subject: *Re: [governance] another interesting IG piece in Forbes
>
>
>
> On Thursday 26 January 2012 01:39 PM, Ian Peter wrote:
>
>
>     Backing up Karl's point - as someone involved in anti spam IETF
>     efforts, I
>     can assure you that it was  pragmatic politics (the need to involve
>     Microsoft) rather than merit or best solutions, than dominated
>     IETF efforts.
>     The result is evident.
>
>     Nothing wrong with that -
>
> I think everything is wrong with this. (This brings to my mind all the 
> despicable things that Microsoft did for getting the OOXML (non) 
> standard recognised.)  Private players should be denied any such 
> political power, and there should be enough checks in the systems for 
> this purpose. Traditionally democratic governance systems try to 
> explicitly keep many insitutional checks in place for this purpose. 
> However, evidently, the new post-democratic information society 
> governance systems find such 'accommodations' quite acceptable even 
> normatively, what to speak of practice.
>
> And such a 'pro-powerful' model is being exported to more and areas of 
> our social life. For instance, one notices with alarm the growing 
> business sector influence in WHO, which is now being institutionally 
> accommodated ( BTW, which is right now being strongly resisted by 
> global and national civil society actors in the health area, unlike 
> what is the case in the IG space.)
>
> Doing governance with the prior accent of the most powerful is a 
> feudal age idea which one thought was superseded by the democracy 
> movement. But multistakeholderism as a governance system, in and by 
> itself, seems to taking us back to the dark ages.
>
> parminder
>
>
>     but that the suggestion that IETF operates purely
>     on technical grounds with no other considerations, is nonsense.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>         From: Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com>
>         <mailto:karl at cavebear.com>
>         Reply-To: <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
>         <mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org> , Karl Auerbach
>         <karl at cavebear.com> <mailto:karl at cavebear.com>
>         Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:48:50 -0800
>         To: <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
>         <mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
>         Subject: Re: [governance] another interesting IG piece in Forbes
>
>         On 01/25/2012 01:11 AM, McTim wrote:
>
>
>
>             http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2012/01/25/who-really-stopped-sopa-an
>             d-why/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>             The engineering task forces are meritocratic and open.
>              The best ideas
>             win through vigorous debate and testing.
>
>
>
>
>         As a person who runs a company that does protocol testing I
>         can attest
>         that the notion of testing protocols is a notion that has
>         withered and
>         left us with many code bases that are... let's be euphemistic
>         and say
>         that they are not industrial strength.
>
>         Those who have spent decades in the IETF know that the notion of
>         technical meritocracy has sometimes been a facade.
>
>         One of the most overt instances of politics over technology
>         occurred
>         back in the mid 1980's when there were three different network
>         management protocols on the table.  One (HEMS) was elegant,
>         but not
>         deeply implemented.  Another (SGMP/SNMP) was ugly and weak but
>         had some
>         implementations.  The last was CMIP from ISO/OSI.
>
>         For political reasons HEMS was sent to die. CMIP was retained
>         as a sop
>         to the then growing GOSIP, MAP, TOP bandwagon for ISO/OSI.
>
>         More recently, but still in the network management path, the
>         NETCONF
>         protocol has had to wear the intentionally deceiving dressing of a
>         "configuration" protocol even though everyone admits that it
>         is a dandy
>         network "management" protocol.
>
>         I know from personal experience that when we standardized (in
>         RFC1001/1002) what eventually became the CIFS protocol (used by
>         Microsoft systems today) that because of pressure from the
>         higher layers
>         of the IETF we had to throw out a very elegant design and
>         replace it
>         with a much less elegant and scalable design based on DNS.  (I
>         remember
>         Paul Mockepetris once standing on a table, glowering, pointing
>         down at
>         me, and in a deep and strong voice declaring that because of
>         those RFCs
>         that I "have destroyed DNS".)
>
>         And we can go back to the beginning of IPv6 - there were several
>         competing proposals on the table.  One that had particularly
>         strong
>         technical merits was TUBA - it was essentially the ISO/OSI
>         connection-less network layer protocol with an address space
>         much larger
>         than IPv6 and many other very nice aspects - such as a decent
>         checksum
>         algorithm.  But it was ISO/OSI and even today much of that
>         technology,
>         no matter how well conceived, is still anathema.
>
>         For instance, in IPv4/v6 there is "mobile IP" - which is
>         really a very
>         strange kind of triangular routing with all kinds of
>         performance and
>         security issues.  ISO/OSI had a different method for this - it
>         used a
>         thing called a "session" layer that makes unnecessary all of the
>         juggling we see in mobile IP.
>
>         We still see the relics of the IP versus ISO/OSI wars - one of
>         these
>         relics affects internet governance directly in the form of a
>         kind of
>         robot-like automatic rejection of anything associated with the ITU
>         (which was one of the engines behind ISO/OSI.)
>
>         None of this is to say that the IETF and internet ignore technical
>         merit.  But to say that the IETF's output is not affected by
>         political
>         forces would be to say something that is not fully accurate.
>
>         Back around 1990 the IETF faced a decision - was it to be a
>         technical
>         body or become a standards body.  It chose the latter.  And I
>         think that
>         many people who participated both before and after that date
>         feel that
>         that change marked a distinct reduction in the innovative
>         quality of the
>         work being done.
>
>         (It does not help either that the management of many tech
>         companies
>         measures aspiring engineers by counting how many "Internet
>         Drafts" and
>         RFCs bear their names.)
>
>         In general internet governance ought not to try to emulate the
>         IETF.
>
>         The IETF is a relatively objective technical world, a world in
>         which
>         goals and backgrounds of the participants are roughly aligned
>         - and in
>         which merit of solutions is, over time, somewhat measurable.
>
>         In nearly every regard the world of internet governance is
>         different -
>         issues are more subjective, the goals of participants are often in
>         complete opposition, and measures of merit are hard to come by.
>
>         (BTW - for those of us interested in internet history, I think
>         that the
>         last TCP/IP "backoff" occurred in 1990 when we all met for a
>         week in
>         North Andover, Mass. at FTP Software and broke one another's
>         software.
>         And the replacement, the Interop show network because less a
>         proving
>         ground a more of a marketing network somewhere in the latter
>         1990's)
>
>         --karl--
>
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>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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