[governance] PIR Case/or the .org sell

[Bill Woodcock]

> On Nov 27, 2019, at 6:05 PM, Corinne Cath (via governance Mailing List) <governance at lists.riseup.net> wrote:
> Imho framing this as an either/or agenda (either we’re “practical” about outcomes or we care about who was in the room) is not the way to go.

That’s quite true, but it’s a straw-man relative to this conversation, as it has no bearing on what I said.  I said that one thing mattered, and the other didn’t.

Deals arise.  Some make it to the table.  What matters is whether they’re beneficial or not.  Whether they bear executing or not.  Who was in the room at what point prior to the deal being put on the table is _utterly irrelevant_.  If you don’t like that deal, you can contribute constructively by critiquing the deal.  If you have a better deal to offer, you can do so.  “Not invented here” has always been a particularly useless criticism.

If you don’t like the fact that ICANN, which is supposed to be a transparent and neutral governance organization, was in the middle of a bunch of insider self-dealing, that’s a separate question from whether this deal should proceed.  Penalizing ISOC and the Internet users who would benefit from its improvement in order to punish the ICANN of today for self-dealing by ICANN executives of the past is ineffectual, short-sighted, and a distraction from both the issues and opportunity at hand.

The status-quo is bad.  ISOC going away is unlikely to happen.  Thus, it seems to me to be a reasonably high priority to attempt to reform it.  Deconflicting it is certainly the single largest step that can be taken in that direction.

                                -Bill

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