Re: [ga] Casting stones

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>]

On 2002-08-06 12:30:10 -0700, Gary Osbourne wrote:

>As I'm the main (or original in this instance) carper, if you want 
>to specifically question my record of contributions, please do so. 
>If I've added less to the process than Jeff Williams, I'll go jump 
>off a bridge forthwith. I suppose people who live in dirt fields 
>should be allowed to cast stones as that is all they have.

Please take Danny's comment with some grains of salt.  Anyone who  
adds reason to this process already contributes a lot.  Anyway, if  
you think that someone is just talking garbage, it may be the best  
thing to just ignore that person.  Replying to that garbage only  
adds to the noise, most of the time, and gives more weight and  
importance to it than it deserves.

>>What I find even more telling is the fact that the Civil 
>>Liberties community (the folks who brought us the Rebid Vote War 
>>;) isn't doing much on-topic, either.

>On what topic? Whose civil liberties? What's next, citizenship for 
>sock puppets? And they didn't bring a vote war, they brought a  
>motion. It was a competing motion that brought the war. Nice  
>retelling of history.

Calm down, Gary.  What brought us the actual "war" was neither the  
first motion, nor the second motion, but a combination of  
stubbornness and mistakes on both sides.  If you actually look  
through the list archives you'll notice that there may have been one 
or two opportunities very early in the discussion where the conflict 
could have been easily resolved, if both sides had made good use of  
these opportunities.

The point is this one: The most important contribution from the NGO  
and civili liberties community I've seen in the recent past was  
indeed this re-bid vote, and their later letter to the DoC.  In the  
best case, this was just a dumb mistake.  In the worst case, the  
NGOs were acting as useful idiots for Verisign's business interests. 
(Putting on asbestos.)

The latest real, substantial contribution of the NGO community to a  
DNSO task force was the .org policy (mostly the work of Milton  
Mueller).  I haven't seen much from that community on transfers, and 
I haven't seen too much on WHOIS.  I have yet to see that the civil  
liberties folks even start to think about building up a  
counterweight to, say, the IP constituency.

I find that disappointing.

>What I find even more telling is that Jeff Williams is still and 
>again allowed to post (and crosspost) on the GA.

It's a purely pragmatic question: Would the benefit of such a move  
outweight the cost inevitably connected to it?

-- 
Thomas Roessler                          http://log.does-not-exist.org/
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