IETF WAS Re: [governance] Enhanced Cooperation (was Re: reality check on economics)

Tue May 22 17:03:12 EDT 2012

I continually find the argument that "IETF works well" to be based on very
little real analysis.

I consider the IETF model to be one which which may have been suitable in
the early internet days but which has probably outlived its usefulness. I
think Tim Berners Lee knew that as long ago as the early 1990s when he moved
WWW standards setting elsewhere.

If the criteria for judging IETF is solving the Internet's main technical
problems, it's hard to rank them highly. Basic matters such as security and
identity and seem to still need a lot of work.

If the basic criteria is creating lots of standards, they do quite well.
There are thousands of them, often overlapping and sometimes unable to
operate with each other. But if the criteria is adoption of standards, they
don't do very well - from the 20-year-to-date slow adoption of IPv6 to many
other standards that just wallow in the RFC archives.

I think we should stop pretending that IETF creates some sort of model to
follow, and analyse its performance and figure whether some other structure,
merger, replacement, or set of improvements might be more suitable for this
day and age. 

IETF was recently described on this list as a meritocracy. Is that a
reasonable assessment, and if so, is that the sort of model for internet
governance we wish to propagate?

Again, I would like to see some decent analysis rather than the belief that
since it has been with us since the good old days it must be good.

Ian Peter

PS one of the things that seems fairly standard in business management is
that the sort of structures that work well for organisations in their early
stages don't necessarily scale to mature and much more complex
organisational needs, and radical change of structure is fairly normal
evolution. We seem to resist that in internet matters.

> From: Avri <avri at acm.org>
> Reply-To: <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>, Avri <avri at acm.org>
> Date: Tue, 22 May 2012 11:01:59 -0400
> To: IGC <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
> Subject: Re: [governance] Enhanced Cooperation (was Re: reality check on
> economics)
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I also do not have an analysis, but from 20+ years participation would say the
> primary reason that capture does not happen is because people would not stand
> for it.  Over time there have been a few occasions when one large company or
> other tried to ram its favorite solutions through the process.  But by the
> time the various WG and review process had been gone through it it was no
> longer the solution that the large company tried to ram through.   And that is
> because people review seriously, do a bit of implementation testing, and argue
> their issues freely.
> 
> Another possible reason it works is genuineness in regards to ones opinion.  I
> have often seen the people from the same company arguing with each other in
> the midst of a public WG meeting over the better path.  Just try to imagine
> two people from a single country or a single organization getting up in a
> meeting and disagreeing with each other? And yet, that would be a healthy sign
> in my view of having achieved a bit of maturity in the multistakeholder model
> 
> Often people say that the IETF formula only works because it is dealing with
> technical subjects but that it would not work in the policy area.  I think
> this argument is unproven and I don't beleive it.  I think people assume there
> is just one correct technological solution, but this is never the case.  There
> are many tradeoffs that must be made a long the way to a possible technical
> solution and the outcome is by no means fated to a single possible solution.
> I think the technical solution space and the policy solution space are not
> inherently dissimilar in character and thus do not accept that it is subject
> matter that make the IETF formula not work for policy issues.
> 
> The main difference I find between the policy arena and the technical area is
> the consistency of people's opinions.  In technology, for the most part,
> people beleive in the same technical solutions even after they change jobs.
> In the policy area, people's views often change when they change jobs.  In
> tech people argue what they personally beleive while in policy people seem to
> often argue what they are paid to beleive in.  In the tech area, one rarely
> gets a job because they picked one technical solution over another, while in
> policy who you agree with determines who you work for and for many people this
> means conforming their views to their potential employers.
> 
> avri
> 
> 
> On 22 May 2012, at 07:26, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> 
>> Andrea Glorioso <andrea at digitalpolicy.it> wrote:
>>> On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 9:59 AM, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:
>>>> So I would suggest that the way forward will have to involve proposals
>>>> of concrete substantive topic areas to be addressed by the "Enhanced
>>>> Cooperation" process and its institutions, together with a strong
>>>> commitment to seek, through true multistakeholder discussions, a good
>>>> way to model this "Enhanced Cooperation" process on how things work in
>>>> the IETF.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> I may have misunderstood and/or missed something, but it seems to me you
>>> are suggesting that there is something in the procedures of the IETF that
>>> shields it from "undue influence" by "powerful stakeholders" etc. I am not
>>> questioning this assumption (at least not right now) but I wonder whether
>>> - assuming I have correctly understood - there are some analytical bases
>>> to this assumption. Not the least because one may distill such processes /
>>> characteristics and try to replicate them elsewhere (although I must say I
>>> am by default unconvinced of the possibility to replicate the processes of
>>> the IETF outside of the very narrow remit of the "organisation").
>> 
>> Hello Andrea and all
>> 
>> Alas I currently do not have any formal analysis. So far the only
>> basis for my assertion is my own observations, as well as confirming
>> anecdotical evidence that I have heard from others. However I am
>> optimistic about the possibility of replicating this "robustness
>> against undue influence attempts from powerful stakeholders"
>> property in the context of other topic areas. In particular, I would
>> suggest that the principles of openness of participation and rough
>> consensus may be applicable quite broadly, while for the criterion
>> of "running code", it will probably be necessary to figure out, for
>> each topic area, a suitable criterion which has similar socioeconomic
>> effects. I would suggest to look, for each topic area, for an informal
>> criterion that provides guidance about when sufficient information is
>> available among the participants of the discussion so that they can,
>> as a group, make a reasonably well-informed rough consensus decision.
>> Anyway, the principles that IETF is based on (absolute openness of
>> participation, rough consensus and running code) are well-known and
>> reasonably well-understood, at least by the people who have
>> participated there.
>> 
>> I would expect the big challenge to be in the area of convincing
>> governments to give this kind of approach, with a suitable replacement
>> for "running code" according to whatever is the particular topic area,
>> a serious chance.
>> 
>> What kind of analysis document would be helpful for that?
>> 
>> Greetings,
>> Norbert
>> 
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> 
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