Re: [wg-c] Unofficial report on L.A. meeting

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

> > > In my universe there is only one definition of for-profit and there are no
> > > clauses in that definition. NSI is in business to make money over and above
> 
> > What Chris wants is something completely different that what NSI has *now*,
> > despite him completely saying that he just wants the same as NSI all the
> > time.
> 
> I really don't see why NSI made the concessions that they did. They didn't
> have to.

Personally I think they did pretty well for themselves, and got much more
than could be considered "fair" but then again fighting further to get more
concessions would have just added more delays all around. In other words, a
forced compromise situation. Why forced? Because NSI had a powerful playing
hand.
The poker game was that NSF/DoC/ICANN could theoretically pull the rug from
under NSI's feet, however NSI was/is quite heavy, and that tug needs a LOT
of strength and NSI knew it.
However if NSI had not made those concessions (which are probably the
smallest set of concessions to avoid a forced rug-pull), then NSF/DoC/ICANN
would have just cut NSI out of the picture completely. In any case, further
discussions are just "but what would have happend if A had done X?" and
don't serve much. We have the current situation and must move on.

> > NSI won  (a long time ago) a competitive bid to run com/net/org where at the
> > end of that bid, everything would be returned to NSF.
> > NSI has fought a quite succesful fight to manage to hang in there despite
> > the odds, outwitting a lot of attempts to get the thing re-bid on a
> > competitive basis at the end of the term.
> 
> Got news for you, NSI won that bid by default. Who was bidding against them?
> Similarly, ICANN is winning by default ... for now. It is all fine and good
> to sit back and complain, but before we can throw out the pitcher, we have
> to have a replacement pitcher. Do you see ICANN stepping up to run the
> root-servers.net system? As much as I piss on NSI operations, they are
> vastly better than ICANN operations. In fact, even YOU can probably run a
> tighter datacenter, either of us have better operations track-record than
> ICANN. What won NSI the bid was NSI having its operational act together.
> What won ICANN its current position was a willingness to do a job that NONE
> of its erstwhile competitors (yes, even ORSC and MHSC) was willing to commit
> hard resources towards. Frnakly, in either case, there was no real
> competition.

You're absolutely right, however I would concentrate rather on the
com/net/org operations for your quote of throwing out the pitcher. Right
*now* there is no alternative to run com/net/org operations tomorrow, and
arguably it is something that cannot be setup over night, so actually
putting a goal some time in the future for a competitive bid on com/net/org
operations makes sense (4/8 years is way too much, but it's what we've got).
On the other hand, the other TLDs are not (as you would put it) playing ball
yet, so just chucking the ball to the first pitcher that turns up is a
little too much... Why (for example) shouldn't NSI-registry be allowed to
bid for the backend running of any other TLD to be put in the roots? Why
should TLD "A" go straight to company "N" when you have the whole alphabet
of other companies that might be willing (and on a level playing field) to
run the same TLD and (maybe) in better conditions?

> > Chris/IOD does not want a competitive bid to run ".web", but
> > wants it to (more or less) do as they wish with it.
> 
> Since that is exactly what I want with my TLDs, I can't find fault with
> that. I also fail to see your point.

Nice to have you admitting that you agree with Chris because it serves your
personal financial benefit. I understand your position much better now.

> > running costs. NSI-registry will be allowed to make a
> > REASONABLE profit, but
> > nowhere near the money-making cow that they have been used to
> > up to now. On
> 
> Not true. The CNO situation is a special case, involving a government
> contract. Similarly with root-servers.net, or we'd have had new TLDs a long
> time ago.

CNO is inside the legacy root servers. What all of us are arguing about is
how to run more TLDs within those very same legacy root-servers, so I don't
really see how you can just swipe CNO aside with a brush of the hand. The
fact that it's NOT easily ignored, and that we're talking about that same
name-space is well demonstrated by the multiple attempts to take your rogue
TLDs live by pushing alternative root-servers. As those don't take off, you
come back to the legacy ones.
If the legacy root-servers are under gov contract, then whatever goes in
them comes under the same contract. If they are NOT under gov contract, then
whoever controls them will be deciding what goes in there. Apparently it's
ICANN who is under strict scrutiny from USGov who will be deciding that.

Yours, John Broomfield