Re: [ga] JCB's post

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

Hi Jeffsey,
	I'll take on your analogy, despite the fact that analogies are
generally very bad (I remember a while back people sick and tired of
analogies as it served to distract... memories grow frail)

> Dear JCB,
>     For you may be to understand. Let assume you drive your car and
>     the rules of the road are sligtly altered: people having the same car
>     as yours are not bound from now on to stop at red lights when you
>     cross their road. I do not know what is your car, but I suppose there
>     are chances that there are less than .5% of the cars of the same
>     make and same color as yours, so why would you bother.

A slight difference is that up to now, your .5% of cars can do exactly the
same as the other 99.5%, except that also it *can* do something completely
different: when searching for a parking place it can hit an "auto-park"
button which will plug in to a central database managed by the manufacturers
of that car that finds free spaces and then automatically drives the car to
that empty space and parks it with no further user intervention. Even so,
very few owners of the car actually know that the auto-park button is
actually there, and many of those who do prefer NOT to auto-park at all
(because it often doesn't work for example, or because the parking spots
they find on their own tend to be better).

>     I suppose you would however be unhappy. Interesting unhappiness:
>     you decide to go by the rules of the road as long as they do not
>     change... but you become unhappy with them.

Now, the central road authority, which most manufacturers build cars in such
a way that they can actually drive along the infrastructure that this
authority oversees (though nothing stops you from flying in a helicopter,
except that you do it away from this authorities infrastructure), has
decided that they will build an auto-park feature, but, for whatever reason,
doesn't like the way that the .5% car builder runs their database on empty
spaces, so has decided to run their database a different way. They actually
do it in such a way that once operational, just about everyone finds that
they have an autopark button in their car, but the guys in the .5% find that
theirs is getting them to different parking places than the othe 99.5%
Most of that .5% takes their car to the garage to get their auto-park
pointed at the database of the road-authority as it is a more generally
accepted one.
The maintainer of the .5% manufacturers database complains loudly about the
fact despite that the authority had always pointed out that it could do this
type of database, and that there were no guarantees/promises/whatever that
it would have anything to do with the older database.

(A second possible scenario -one that I find rather humoristic, but some
maintainers of alternative roots swear by-, is that once the road-authority
sets up their own database, the majority of car owners -of the 99.5%- go to
their garage in disgust and ask to be switched over to the .5% database as
it is free from dictatorship and they will not have me and I hate those
black helicopters)

> My point is simply this: non-legacy TLDs are a part of the more general
> matter; the iCANN's approach/management of the Inclusive Name Space
> (i.e. the whole part of the Name Space that is concerned by the DNS). This
> policy (which affects all the TLDs) is to be understood, controled and advised
> as a whole by the DNSO according to its charter. To be able to do that,
> Danny Younger is right, we need a WG-Inclusive Name Space Management.
> But we have first to have a self education, a non-fighting agreement on some
> issues, and to come with a documented proposition to the BoD and to the NC.

The name-space that you are talking about, which is the group of all zones
that exist in whatever server in whatever format is not worth talking about.
*ANYBODY* can combine whatever letters they want at whatever moment and slam
that into a nameserver declaring themselves to be authoritative. We have
even seen repetitively that each of the alternative root-spaces has come up
with other competitors out there and that there are battles out there that
not even they respect amongst themselves (how many .web have been out there?
how many .biz? I think that there have been multiple "claimants" to .earth
too... etc...).

ICANN has created a forum to discuss FAIRLY, in cooperation, in consensus,
how to add TLDs to the legacy namespace. That venue is discussing how to
addition to this particular name-space, not to anyone elses private vision
of it. It's akin to IP numbering. You know that you can use certain
addresses for private numbering which won't create a problem with anyone.
But you decide to go and search for a block of addresses that nobody is
currently using to number your own private network. Problem is that a while
after you do so, the central authority decides to actually start assigning
the block that you had unilaterally chosen without informing the central
database (or maybe you had informed them, but they had replied politely but
firmly that they would not necesarily respect your numbering plan, nor would
the fact that you were already numbered have any bearing in their decision
to assign those addresses), and now you complain that those addresses are
assigned according to the rules that they have established, rules which you
are allowed to participate in creating/modifying, and you have a vote, but
not one which is overly great wrt your respective weight (in fact you DO
have too much of a say, as collectively you account for less than .5%, but
your voice is much noisier than .5%).

And thanks once again to another person for telling me that I haven't
studied the problem. As someone pointed out in some other message, I've been
involved in the "DNS-wars" for 4-6 years now, and continue to be zone
contact for a couple of small ccTLDs.

Yours, John Broomfield.
100% in a personal capacity.
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