The book, being written by an actual credentialed historian, contains their complete sources as footnotes/endnotes. That section was overwhelming, I mostly skipped it...
Adam Thompson
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my favorite is
It’s perfectly appropriate to be upset.
Ack…
I thought of it in a slightly
different way–like a space that we were exploring and, in the early days,
we figured out this consistent path through the space: IP, TCP, and so on.
the impact of IP, TCP in improving human life across the globe in the last decades can not be overstated.
Human enginuity through names like Google have enabled the age of information and access to information through addresses and digital trade routes have continued to ensure peace for humanity on the positive side of the communications spectrum.
What’s been happening over the last few years is that the IETF is filling
the rest of the space with every alternative approach, not necessarily any
better. Every possible alternative is now being written down. And it’s not
useful. – Jon Postel
I suppose original human ideas and thoughts tends to stand the taste of time.
Iterations often times leads back to the beginning.
Noah
Dear Noah:
0) "Iterations often times leads back to the beginning.": Thanks for distilling this thread to a concise principle. Perhaps your name was given with the foresight of this discussion? 
1) As a newcomer to the arena, I have always been perplexed by the apparent collective NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome of the Internet community. While promoting openness, everything seems to go with "my way or noway". Of course, each Internet practice or convention was determined by some sort of consensus by majority opinion. However, once it gets going, it appears to be cast in concrete. There is a huge inertia against considering alternatives or improvements. Some of them even appear to be volunteered "policing" without full understanding of the background. Just like how practically all democratic governments are facing these days, a well-intended crowd can be led by an influencer to derail a social normality. It does not seem to me that strictly adhering to "one person one vote" rule can guide us toward a productive future.
2) To follow what you are saying, I wonder how could we think "out of the box" or go "back to the future", before it is too late for our world wide communications infrastructure to serve as a reliable daily tool without being a distraction constantly? That is, four decades should be long enough for our Internet experiments to be reviewed, so that we can try navigating out of the current chaos, or start with an alternative.
Regards,
Abe (2022-10-30 18:41 EDT)
What is going on on the Internet is not democracy even formally, because there is no formal voting.
3GPP, ETSI, 802.11 have voting. IETF decisions are made by bosses who did manage to gain power (primarily by establishing a proper network of relationships).
It could be even called “totalitarian” because IETF bosses could stay in one position for decades.
Democracy does not work anywhere because unqualified people could be driven to make wrong decisions.
Voting qualification check is mandatory, not everybody should have the right to vote for a particular question.
I do not want to tell what was the qualification check in the early US or ancient Greece (where democracy was working) – because many would shout at me. It is not relevant to the technical group anyway.
ETSI filters voting rights by money – the company should pay for memberships.
802.11 filter voting rights by the member’s physical presence on the last 4 meetings.
It is not ideal but it is better than no filtering at all.
Eduard
1. What is going on on the Internet is not democracy even formally, because there is no formal voting.
3GPP, ETSI, 802.11 have voting. IETF decisions are made by bosses who did manage to gain power (primarily by establishing a proper network of relationships).
It could be even called “totalitarian” because IETF bosses could stay in one position for decades.
I do not see how it can be called totalitarian given the IETF Nomcom
appointment and recall mechanisms. Admittedly it is not full on
Sortition (Sortition - Wikipedia) but it is just one
level of indirection from Sortition. (See
Indirection: The Unsung Hero Of Software Engineering)
Thanks,
Donald
It is believed by many that 2 terms should be the maximum for one position of any chair (if it is a democracy).
It is evidently not the case for IETF - people stay in power for decades. It is just a fact that is not possible to dispute.
Yes, Nomcom is the mechanism for AD and above. I do not want to sort out how exactly it is performed.
By the way, WG chairs have been put aside from any election mechanisms.
If any politician would manage to possess power for more than 2 terms - he would be immediately called "totalitarian".
Even if he would say that there is a mechanism for it.
Eduard
Donald helped setup this Nomcom system, based upon his experience in the
F&SF community WorldCon. Credit where credit is due, and our thanks!
Randy Bush has also had some cogent thoughts over the years.
Once upon a time, I'd proposed that we have some minimum eligibility
requirements, such as contributing at least 10,000 lines of code, and/or
*operational* experience. Certain IESG members objected (who stuck
around for many years).
Once upon a time, IETF did have formal hums. That went by the wayside
with IPSec. Photuris won the hum (overwhelmingly). We had multiple
interoperable international independent implementations.
Then Cisco issued a press release that they were supporting the US NSA
proposal. (Money is thought to have changed hands.) The IESG followed.
Something similar happened with IPv6. Cisco favored a design where only
they had the hardware mechanism for high speed forwarding. So we're
stuck with 128-bit addresses and separate ASNs.
Again with high speed fiber (Sonet/SDH). The IESG overrode the existing
RFC with multiple independent implementations in favor of an unneeded
extra convolution that only those few companies with their own fabs could
produce. So that ATT/Lucent could sell lower speed tier fractional links.
Smaller innovative companies went out of business.
Of course, many of the behemoths that used the standards process to
suppress competitors via regulatory arbitrage eventually went out of
business too.
Internet Vendor Task Force indeed.
Dear William:
0) "Internet Vendor Task Force indeed.": Thank you so much in distilling this thread one more step for getting even closer to its essence.
1) The ITU charter is explicit in that governments are the parties who sponsor the Recommendations, then implement them as desired, respectively as well as dealing with the outcome, no matter it is good or bad, since there is no scapegoat.
2) The IETF is implicitly sponsored by businesses to create RFCs then impose them on (although may be called voluntarily adopted by) players internationally, without claiming much responsibility for its effects to the society. That is, the wealth of the citizens is extracted by the businesses through RFCs starting from treating IP addresses as private properties, while the governments bear the burden of dealing with the negative effects such as cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
3) It appears to me that by mentally branding ITU type of UN organizations "evil", the delicate balance between Cause & Consequence has been broken in the Internet era, with the businesses taking advantage of the first "C" for the benefit of their "shareholders" (creating billionaire CEOs, COOs, CFOs, etc.) while leaving the second "C" for the governments and the poor peasants to endure. I am not sure whether this is an improved operation model.
4) No wonder that there was an APNIC Labs Policy notes about "The Internet's Gilded Age" sometime ago. We need to recognize this root cause and begin to take corrective actions for navigating out of it.
Regards,
Abe (2022-11-02 08:32 EDT)
It is believed by many that 2 terms should be the maximum for one position of any chair (if it is a democracy).
The length of time in office and the amount of power in the office
are, in my opinion, much, Much more important than the mere number of
terms. I think that Elizabeth the II being Queen of England for 70
years was not much of a problem -- and it wasn't because she served
only 1 term of office. It was because the British monarchy has
essentially no executive authority.
IETF Area Directors are selected for 2 year terms (or less if they are
filling out the remainder of a term when someone has left office) not
because 2 years is thought to be a reasonable length of time in
office. I was around when the IETF NomCom system was being set up and
the term was limited to 2 years as a balance between short terms to
limit the damage a bad Area Director could do and long terms to
decrease the amount of work for the NomCom. (In the early years of the
NomCom, I believe there were a small number of cases of a 3 year term
but only for an AD who had already successfully served for 2 years.)
Although this isn't a written guideline, many people believe that the
first 2 years in an Area Director position are sort of a probationary
period and as long as the AD does adequately, they should normally be
continued for a 2nd term, if they want it. Being continued for a 3rd
or later term should only be for superior performance and in the
absence of an apparently stronger alternative. Note the following
-- Having served in one capacity or another on six Nomcoms over the
30 year history of the Nomcom system and I can assure you that there
are always at least 1 or 2 positions for which the Nomcom, after the
normal nomination period, has only zero or one possibilities to choose
between and it is common for NomCom to have to engage in substantial
recruiting (aka "arm twisting") to get more nominees from which to
choose. I just checked the NomCom pages and right now there are three
positions where, for the 2022-2024 term, the current NomCom has only
one person who has been nominated and agreed to run. So it isn't like
they have a vast pool of willing people to choose between.
-- Most former Area Directors say that there is a substantial
learning curve and it takes about a year before you are fully
effective as an Area Director. So, if ADs were limited to 1 term of 2
years, the IESG would only be 50 to 75% effective. With 2 terms of 2
years, it is more like 75 to 88% effective.
Furthermore, most Areas of the IETF have two co-ADs who tend to
moderate each other and many decisions are made by the IESG, which
consists of all the ADs, which is a further moderating effect.
It is evidently not the case for IETF - people stay in power for decades. It is just a fact that is not possible to dispute.
Yes, Nomcom is the mechanism for AD and above. I do not want to sort out how exactly it is performed.
Well, the NomCom system is well documented in a number of RFCs.
The most powerful single position in the IETF is the IETF Chair. As
you can see from the attached image only one person has served as IETF
Chair for as long as 8 years but as soon as the nomcom system was
started, they were replaced. After that, only one other person served
as long as 6 years, which was Russ Housley who I think was a
particularly good IETF Chair. All others have been limited to 2 or 4
years (1 or 2 terms). It would take a lot more work to do a similar
analysis for AD positions but I believe you would find that the length
of time in office for ADs was longer in the early days of the IETF and
is now rarely over 6 years.
In an earlier message, you said something about people retaining
positions due to networking with other people. Well, I would say that
is characteristic of all human organizations (unless you go with
strict Sortition). See my RFC 4144 "How to Gain Prominence and
Influence in Standards Organizations".
By the way, WG chairs have been put aside from any election mechanisms.
Yes, there are people who have served as co-Chair of an IETF Working
Group for long periods of time and there is currently no specific term
of office for a WG Chair. But these days most IETF WGs have two
co-Chairs, which has a moderating influence. Furthermore, Area
Directors are where the real power is. The AD for a WG has the power
to remove or appoint Chairs anytime so you have a very clear appeal
path if you believe a WG Chair has acted improperly and failed, in
your opinion, to rectify their error when you call their attention to
it.
If any politician would manage to possess power for more than 2 terms - he would be immediately called "totalitarian".
I would agree that if a position has substantial executive power and
someone fills the position for a long enough time (perhaps in the
range of 8 to 10 years) then there is an effect where it gets harder
and harder to imagine someone else in the position, etc. But I
wouldn't necessarily call it "totalitarian" and the length of time is
much more important than the number of terms. If someone is elected
Speaker of the US House of Representatives for 3 successive
Congresses, thus serving for 6 years (3 terms) in that office, they
will have substantial clout because of this but they can't rule the
House like a dictator against the wishes of a majority of the
representatives of their party who can vote them out of the Speaker's
office and elect someone else whenever they want. The fact that it is
possible for a Speaker to be so elected for 6 or more years and that
this has happened does not make the US House of Representatives a
"totalitarian" organization and I would not call it that.
Thanks,
Donald
I suppose this might be a useful point to butt in and say that one
reason we don't/can't easily term-limit US representatives to congress
is that it unjustly removes their right to run for office.
Obviously (I think) not apropos to IETF functioning tho perhaps in
spirit.
But it's why it took an amendment to the US constitution to impose
term limits on the presidency.
And though they're difficult to overturn some will argue that this
amendment removed not only the right of an individual to run for that
office but also the right of voters to vote for that individual.
Term limits are funny things and one thing making them an issue is
advances in medicine where people might be effective well into their
90s (Warren Buffet is 92.)
As I'd mentioned already, Randy Bush has also had some cogent thoughts
over the years. That's where I'd first heard this phrasing long ago.
Credit where credit is due.
I've been involved since 1979. Hostility to an ITU-style organization
arises from the earliest days of the NSFnet (which was government
funded), in part because ATT was using the existing standards bodies to
prevent the academic Internet itself from going forward.
There's a lot of history.
There are many different models for standards organization governance.
I've been the head of standards for Red Hat for a few years (until it
was bought by IBM), navigating roughly 50 different organizations.
Back in the day, my early involvement was funded by government grants,
government oversight committees, and political campaigns. (Particularly,
my PPP work was originally funded by Bob Carr for Congress and Carl Levin
for Senate, via Practical Political Consulting.)
And for nearly half my life, I've been spending my time with a now former
Member of Congress. So I've seen folks who know politics well....
All human effort is inherently political. Our problem is, engineers are
particularly poor at politics.
Sent using a machine that autocorrects in interesting ways...
I do not understand why you believe that only AD matters,
if the real management is done mostly by Chairs.
Ed/
William Allen Simpson wrote:
Something similar happened with IPv6. Cisco favored a design where only
they had the hardware mechanism for high speed forwarding. So we're
stuck with 128-bit addresses and separate ASNs.
Really?
Given that high speed forwarding at that time meant TCAM,
difference between 128 bit address should mean merely twice
more TCAM capacity than 64 bit address.
I think the primary motivation for 128 bit was to somehow
encode NSAP addresses into IPng ones as is exemplified
by RFC1888. Though the motivation does not make any
engineering sense, IPv6 neither.
Masataka Ohta
At the risk of being severely off-topic, this is an existential question that talks to the burden of priviledge.
Current society has such technological advancement, famine, drought and war are not top-of-mind for most people (even if these issues are for many), compared to millennia gone by.
The difficulty with modern-day priviledge is that many people cannot answer the "why" to our existence, because there is simply easy and abundant access to information, with comfort, that leaves so many without direction until much later in life. In millennia gone by, your purpose in life was to survive war, find food, find water, and keep your kin alive. The world is, for the most part, too comfortable for that, nowadays.
All that leads to is the "constant distraction" that we see today, more so with the kids, but also with many adults. The very thing that has propelled society in many useful ways, is also what is likely going to set us back a tad.
Mark.
William Allen Simpson wrote:
Something similar happened with IPv6. Cisco favored a design where only
they had the hardware mechanism for high speed forwarding. So we're
stuck with 128-bit addresses and separate ASNs.Given that high speed forwarding at that time meant TCAM,
difference between 128 bit address should mean merely twice
more TCAM capacity than 64 bit address.
Carrying the ASN in every packet, going back to my Practical
Internet Protocol Extensions (PIPE) draft that was merged into
SIP->SIPP, meant there was no need for Content Addressable Memory.
And was closer to the original Internet Protocol design of smart
edges with dumber switches.
Reminder, PIPE was 1992. We'd barely deployed BGP.
I think the primary motivation for 128 bit was to somehow
encode NSAP addresses into IPng ones as is exemplified
by RFC1888.
Probably as many motivations as there were members of the IESG.
Telcos wanted their addresses, some hardware vendors wanted
IEEE addresses.
But several vendors seemed very intent on using the standards
process for putting competitors out of business.
Though the motivation does not make any
engineering sense, IPv6 neither.
Not much about the IPv6 result makes any sense. I'd reserved v6.
For a long time, I've been rather irritated that it was used for
purposes so far from my design intent.
some minor observations from the vantage point of a former AD inline.
It is believed by many that 2 terms should be the maximum for one position of any chair (if it is a democracy).
Although this isn't a written guideline, many people believe that the
first 2 years in an Area Director position are sort of a probationary
period and as long as the AD does adequately, they should normally be
continued for a 2nd term, if they want it. Being continued for a 3rd
or later term should only be for superior performance and in the
absence of an apparently stronger alternative. Note the following
In my observed experience, it pretty much falls to a incumbent AD, to recruit alternatives, assuming they are doing a tolerable job of addressing the needs of their working groups. having done my 2 terms I found the role to be more one of middle management then of leadership, with the possible exception of organizing and promoting new work organization around BOFs and working group formation.
ADs are highly dependent on WG chairs and senior individual contributors when it comes to advancing any particular activity.
-- Having served in one capacity or another on six Nomcoms over the
30 year history of the Nomcom system and I can assure you that there
are always at least 1 or 2 positions for which the Nomcom, after the
normal nomination period, has only zero or one possibilities to choose
between and it is common for NomCom to have to engage in substantial
recruiting (aka "arm twisting") to get more nominees from which to
choose. I just checked the NomCom pages and right now there are three
positions where, for the 2022-2024 term, the current NomCom has only
one person who has been nominated and agreed to run. So it isn't like
they have a vast pool of willing people to choose between.
-- Most former Area Directors say that there is a substantial
learning curve and it takes about a year before you are fully
effective as an Area Director. So, if ADs were limited to 1 term of 2
years, the IESG would only be 50 to 75% effective. With 2 terms of 2
years, it is more like 75 to 88% effective.
Also, serving as an AD is significantly detrimental to one's own work in the IETF, both from a time perspective and respecting any chair, or other positions in one's area that you would give up in the process. As a volunteer activity there is a significant community service aspect too it. Unless your career goals involve a sympathetic employer and a goal of joining and staying in internet governance long term ADship has a significant impact on your ability to contribute to the IETF. I did my 4 years, that was enough.
Furthermore, most Areas of the IETF have two co-ADs who tend to
moderate each other and many decisions are made by the IESG, which
consists of all the ADs, which is a further moderating effect.It is evidently not the case for IETF - people stay in power for decades. It is just a fact that is not possible to dispute.
Yes, Nomcom is the mechanism for AD and above. I do not want to sort out how exactly it is performed.Well, the NomCom system is well documented in a number of RFCs.
The most powerful single position in the IETF is the IETF Chair. As
you can see from the attached image only one person has served as IETF
Chair for as long as 8 years but as soon as the nomcom system was
started, they were replaced. After that, only one other person served
as long as 6 years, which was Russ Housley who I think was a
particularly good IETF Chair. All others have been limited to 2 or 4
years (1 or 2 terms). It would take a lot more work to do a similar
analysis for AD positions but I believe you would find that the length
of time in office for ADs was longer in the early days of the IETF and
is now rarely over 6 years.In an earlier message, you said something about people retaining
positions due to networking with other people. Well, I would say that
is characteristic of all human organizations (unless you go with
strict Sortition). See my RFC 4144 "How to Gain Prominence and
Influence in Standards Organizations".
The IETF as a whole has activities (Working Groups) whose productivity on a given topic is largely driven by a small number of individual contributors, these folks are entirely self-selected (authors, editors, collaborators, implentors). While there is not doubt quite a bit of survivor bias, networking and well as the capacity to be present (in person, remote) are necessary and rather expensive parts of advancing given pieces of work.