[9424] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Aikens last (but long) posting/comments on ISOC and related issues
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Simon Poole)
Wed Jan 5 05:56:06 1994
To: Erik.Huizer@surfnet.nl (Erik Huizer)
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 1994 11:55:23 +0100 (MET)
Cc: poole@magnolia.eunet.ch, AIKEN@ccc.nersc.gov, braden@isi.edu,
In-Reply-To: <"survis.sur.292:05.00.94.08.31.29"@surfnet.nl> from "Erik Huizer" at Jan 5, 94 09:31:25 am
From: Simon Poole <poole@magnolia.eunet.ch>
Erik,
> Let me state that CXII is initiated by a group of people who think these
> issues are important and need dealing with. Specifically the EEMA has asked
> the IETF to provide such a group, and see whther it can come up with
> suggestions/recommendations that can be used by the EEMA.
I'm not aware of any such request by the EEMA, matter of fact the members
of the EEMA WG on exactly this topic were rather supprised by the parallel
effort.
> Now all of the potential ADs (incl. me) have been very sceptical about this
> group belonging in IETF. Finally we have said: We are willing to offer a
> home to this, if a) there is a constituency, b) if they could get commercial
> operators (Internet and ADMD) to get involved and participate, c) if they
> limited the scope to what the EEMA asked (i.e. X.400 connectivity).
By the very nature of what the CXII WG group intends to achieve or needs to
put in place to achieve its goals (official representation of the Internet,
an Internet business model and so on) even with the limited scope the
consequences are very far reaching and in my eyes totally outside the charter
of the IETF.
> So far CXII is not yet a WG of the IETF, it may still become one, if we get
> the conditions fullfilled. Whether that is appropriate to Isoc/IETF is
> surely an item for discussion, and that's why I started the debate on
> establishment of an IOTF, which was torpedoed by secveral people, although
> everybody seemed to agree at some level that such a body was necessary, most
> of the paranoid ones yelled that it should not be under Isoc. As I have no
> problem with starting off outside of Isoc, that's fine with me. Although in
> the long run we may need to give it some legal status and Isoc MAY (i say
> MAY) turn out to be the best option.
I wouldn't consider an "IOTF" to be without merit, however I consider it very
dangerous simply to take the IETF model (that works very well in the technical
area) and apply it to a region that has even more business impact than the
technical decisions made in the IETF. It becomes even more problematic when
the scope includes direct commercial and business issues as in the case of
the CXII WG.
Simon
