Some ideas about COMMON VALUES -- Re: Proposed DNSO bylaws

[Einar Stefferud <Stef@nma.com>]

At last we are having a serious discussion on the critical issues.

Over New Years, up in the mountains of southern California, I came
across a very interesting book (just purchased by a friend) that
reports on an effort to find a global set of common "VALUES" upon
which it might be possible for all people, cultures and religions to
agree, and which then in turn can support related goals, strategic
plans for goal achievement, tactical operations for working toward
achievement of selected goals, and also yield a broad rough consensus
in terms of ethical and moral VALUES.

What I see as missing in our DNSO efforts so far, is this same kind of
effort to find our common DNS system VALUES.  Of course, I did not
think of actually seeking out such VALUES until I read the book;-)...
But, the author appears to have succeeded, so why don't we try too.

This is in some sense the meta meta problem, of finding the higher
level roots of our desired solution, based on agreed upon common
VALUES, before setting goals, before choosing strategic plans, and
before choosing operational tactics for execution to achieve the
chosen goals.

So, in parallel with this new ORSC sponsored bylaw drafting effort, I
would like to explore our VALUES and GOALS which must stand above and
lend guidance to our entire DNS coordination effort.

Let me start with a few of what I think are our common VALUES, and ask
for some discussion of them, and other common VALUES to be identified
by other participants.  What I have here is by no means complete nor
the end of this story.  It is only a beginning, intended to strike a
chord and lead to a path for progress.

1.  FAIRNESS: We all agree that we all (each and everyone one of us) 
    want to be treated FAIRLY, whatever that means.  I believe we also
    want to treat others fairly!  Fear of UNFAIRNESS appears to me to
    be the singularly most critical driver in most of our various
    contentious arguments.  This is one of our worst nightmares.
    
    Stated in more positive terms, this VALUE is what we mean when we
    say "Treat others as you would like them to treat you!"  In
    internet protocol terms, this is known as "Be conservative in what
    you send, and liberal in what you accept"!  Of course, in a real
    world, we know that we cannot expect to always be so treated, so
    we learn to maintain our guard against unfair treatment, or
    against liberal sending in the case of Internet protocol machines.
    Maintaining our guard is a very important aspect of things.

2.  DIVERSITY:  We all seem to want somewhat different results, in
    terms of profit vs non-profit, one business model vs another, or
    one model for all vs open choice of models, etc...  But, I
    believe we all agree that the Internet is designed to handle
    DIVERSITY of applications over a common interconnection substrate,
    and I believe that DIVERSITY is something that we agree is both
    inevitable and desirable in the Global Internet.  

    What is the VALUE of global HOMOGENEITY in place of DIVERSITY?
    Enforced HOMOGENEITY is also one of our major nightmares,
    especially if "The Other Guys" get to set the rules!  
    So we redouble our guard!

3.  CONSENSUS:  We all agree that we need broad Rough CONSENSUS, else
    whatever global DNS coordinating structure is put in place will
    suffer an endless series of attacks and workarounds until it is
    operationally defeated in the operational Internet.  

    This is the notion that collectively we really want only ONE
    INTERNET, but if the one we are allowed to have is not adequate,
    we will work from the edges to make it into what we want it to be.
    If any of us really want to be disconnected from The Net, we can
    very easily achieve this without collective action.  But, it
    requires collective cooperative action to become and stay
    interconnected.  

    It is the VALUE of Universal Interconnection that we seek!  The
    desire in all of us to be interconnected is the glue that holds he
    Internet together.  Thus, the entire Internet is VALUE based, and
    we must be faithful to the VALUE the common VALUE of being
    interconnected.

4.  STABILITY:  We all agree that whatever is done, it must deliver
    STABILITY of operations in terms of services delivered to the
    users of the Internet.  But, I think that maybe this is a GOAL,
    and not a VALUE, even though having it adds value.

5.  COHERENCE:  We all agree that the DNS must be coherent at all
    levels, which is to say, it must not contain name-to-address
    conflicts such that the same name resolves differently in
    different servers, except during brief times when specific zone
    changes are being propagated.  But, again, this looks more like a
    GOAL than a VALUE.

6.  OPENNESS:  I think we all agree that OPEN is better than CLOSED,
    though we may have different notions of what OPEN means in
    operation.  Some of us believe that it is critical for our
    creative processes to be open, while other seems to believe that
    it is sufficient to display the results of closed deliberations
    for all to see, but without any means for effecting changes.  So,
    many of us object strongly when the creative process is not
    OPEN, just because of the VALUE we give to OPENNESS.  So, I see
    this as a VALUE, and not a GOAL.  Your mileage may vary.

7.  TRUST: We all understand the need to TRUST each other, and to
    TRUST the coordinating structures that we collectively put in
    place.  Without TRUST in our collective creations, they have very
    little VALUE.  TRUST might be a meta VALUE, in that we need to be
    able to TRUST the FAIRNESS of everything we collectively create.

As I stated above, I am certain that my little list is nothing more
than an initial stake in the ground to suggest that the VALUE
dimension is critical for us all to understand, and thus it might be
critically important for us to collectively explore what our common
VALUES are, so we can all keep them in mind as we proceed to develop
goals and plans and tactics, all of which must be reflected in our
bylaws, and in the institutions created by our bylaws.

It seems obvious to me now that I have seen the book, that getting
clear on our common VALUES will help us to later find ways to find
consensus agreements on, or at least mutual acceptance of, goals,
strategies and tactics.

Without a relatively clear understanding of our common VALUES, I do
not see how we might ever agree on any set of goals, whether
completely aligned or just nicely compatible.  The question is, if we
do not have a sense of our common VALUES, how will we know when we are
aligned on our VALUES.

So, as I see it, hopefully we might be able to find CONSENSUS on
common VALUES, and then in keeping with our agreed upon VALUES, adopt
compatible, though not necessarily identical sets of goals, with
corresponding strategic plans and tactical operations to support our
desired DIVERSITY without giving up FAIRNESS while achieving our
separate and collective GOALS.  And, with our VALUES understood, we
can easily take notice when our goals, strategies or tactics violate
our common VALUES.

And, here is a last thought.  Given some set of common values, such as
above, then within that context, we can set goals for such things as
COHERENCE, STABILITY, SECURITY, RELIABILITY, FAIRNESS,
TRUSTWORTHYNESS, ETC, and these can be expressed operationally as
objective criteria for acceptance of new TLDs for admission into the
COMMOM ROOT, which must be FAIRLY administered through cooperative
coordination of all the TLD Registry Operators.  The TLD registries
are the source of all data to be recorded in the COMMON ROOT ZONE, and
thus shared by all users of the Internet, who are primarily interested
in always being able to connect with whomever they wish.

Just some food for thought.

The book I found over the New Year's weekend was written by:

	 Kidder Rushworth, published in 1994, and titled

	"Shared Values for a Troubled World: 
	 Conversations with Men and Women of Conscience"

I recommend it highly.  It gets at the core of our problems of finding
and using our globally shared core VALUES to build consensus in a
shrinking world which is suffering from "technobulge".

It is available from AMAZON;-)...  I am buying a copy for myself;-)...

Cheers...\Stef

PS: I wonder if we can find some way to get Kidder Rushworth to become
    involved in our efforts to sort out the DNS MESS.  I think his
    ideas and his methodology would be extremely valuable to us and to
    the future of the Internet.  I also suspect that the Internet
    would give him a real world experience in applying his work...\s


>From your message Sun, 03 Jan 1999 19:55:50 -0500:
}
}Dan,
}
}>Grandfathering all existing TLDs in the root (any proposal that leads
}>to instability will just run up against too many brick walls)
}>Open Business Model (any proposal that mandates not-for-profit or
}>for-profit will run into too many brick walls)
}>Registrar-registry breakout mandatory except for "true" ccTLDs (if we
}>don't do this, there will be too many anti-trust considerations down
}>the line.  There is no technical reason, just doing our bit to stay
}>out of court)
}>A more defined class for prospective registries like IOD, Iperdome,
}>CORE, etc. (anything else will just prolong the DNS wars)
}
}You have it exactly right, except I'm not convinced the 
}registrar-registry thing is required to pass antitrust
}muster.  The purpose of this DNSO and ICANN are to 
}facilitate cooperation.  That can't be underscored enough.
}The endgame here is "herding cats," not dictating people's
}druthers.
}
}
}--tony