Re: Fw: [ALSC-Forum] Self-regulation and ICANN

[Jeff Williams]

Dean and all stakeholders or interested parties,

Malcolm Dean wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Karl Auerbach" <karl@cavebear.com>
> To: "Malcolm Dean" <malcolmdean@earthlink.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 2:13 PM
> Subject: Re: [ALSC-Forum] Self-regulation and ICANN
>
> > > How is it that the likes of the WWW Consortium and Open Source efforts
> are
> > > somehow not in the center of ICANN's vision?
> >
> > Because many of us who wear technical hats tend to not have a deep sense
> > of the emotional or competitive parts of human nature.  The issues facing
> > ICANN are much "softer" in the sense that there is less room or means to
> > test whether decisions made are good or ill.
>
> They are so soft they would disappear if thoroughly wetted. In other words,
> there is no solid reason to introduce a purely bureaucratic level without
> any clear technological vision directing its decisions.

  Indeed, very much agreed.  It is in wonderment that such a competent
technical expertise absent in decisions that the ICANN BoD and staff
have made thus far, most especially dealing with the DNS and IP
inaddr-apra. Instead taking the direction of making a political discussion
and position(s) with technical issues.

>
>
> > Open source has its wars - the highly restrictive GNU copyleft versus the
> > more liberal open source agreements.
>
> Not the point. The point is that the Web Consortium and the Open Source
> community manage to gather volunteer committes composed of clearly brilliant
> minds to develop visions and solve problems. With due respect, I don't see
> that level of input informing ICANN's actions or intentions.

  The input has been there and repeated over and over again.  However the
ICANN BoD and staff has decidedly determined to make technical issues
political ones more often than not.

>
>
> > > When advanced vendors are already laying plans for self-healing
> > > Operating Systems and self-managing networks
> >
> > Hmmm, that's my special interest, self-healing networks.  Been working on
> > that topic, on and off, for about 15 years now.  I started one company to
> > do that in the early 1990's, worked on it at Cisco, and am now starting
> > another company in which that will part of its mission.  One aspect of
> > self-healing is that with even minor mistakes it becomes one of the
> > fastest ways to heal a network into a state of non-operation. ;-)
> > --karl--
>
> So you often say, but again, not the point. Just because it didn't work
> before doesn't mean it will continue to be impossible. ICANN's "domain", if
> you like, is really a distributed database problem. It's a technical
> problem, not a bureaucratic problem.

  Agreed.  But Karls point is precisely this though stated differently (From
above).
The mistakes that Karl mentions have been mostly minor on the technical side,
but none the less terribly detrimental.  This is why and @large is needed
so as to have those decisions checked by the @ large members and decided
by the @large by vote.

> Why don't we have an "ICANN" for IPv6?

  We do, it just has a different name!  >;)

>
> Because the "shortage" of domain suffixes is a shortage of technical
> expertise and imagination.

  Not a shortage of expertise, but definitely a shortage of imagination.

> To make this even clearer, I'm not suggesting
> that the domain system can be run without humans or without management or
> vision; I'm suggesting it can be run without bureaucrats.

  Indeed it can be run without bureaucrats.

Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 118k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
Contact Number:  972-447-1800 x1894 or 214-244-4827
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