RE: [wg-b] RE: [wg-c] IAB Technical Comment on the Unique

[Eric Brunner <brunner@world.std.com>]

The individual person who offered his opinion that the work in question was
the work of an individual, and not reflecting the considered reflection of
the body, was Tony. I didn't notice anyone else suggesting that the textual
criticism should extend from the text to its putative author(s).

I offered Tony corroboration that his opinion was unsupported by members of
that body, which he accepted, remarking on the questionable self-similarity
of the membership, or otherwise suggesting that the scope of criticism of
the text should extend to its collective authors as a body.

The IAB has put out a number of technical statements over the past decade,
I can't recall one which has been eroded over time. I wish they'd stomped
out NATs before they spread, but thats a taste issue.

I did have a reason for taking up the issue with Tony, wearing my co-author
hat of draft-ietf-dnsind-iana-dns-03.txt. He, Karl, and Roeland all have
an opportunity to speak to the issue of the semantics of IANA reserved
octets in the DNS label space. They haven't taken advantage of the WG last
call, announced in the namedroppers list. They will have the opportunity
in the IESG last call period. I had the same reason for making that the
first question in my list of "nagging questions".

Aternate naming schemes are not unreasonable, whether anchored at the root
or local, or even eschewing a particular mechanism for name-to-address
resolution, but most people settle for a well-known default mechanism and
installed infrastructure and service model -- the bind/IANA duo.

What is unreasonable is for people who want to work outside of the scope
of the bind/IANA defacto (and dejure, but not mandatory) standard, to add
to the complexity of work within that scope. The YES votes of two of these
three add less to the clarity of the question at hand than the repeated
out of scope issues they propose. This is a little hard of Karl, as he's
been quiet as a mouse of late, but apropos for Tony and Roeland.

It is provincial of me, but I've vastly greater confidence in the technical
acumen of people I've known for over a decade, the members of the IAB and
their predecessors and peers in the IESG and IRTF, and the implmentors and
maintainers of bind, than I have in a person I only know from his jarring,
mean spirited, and technically hollow public mail, and lamentable private
mail.

In case there is any lack of clarity to which item I'm responding to, it
is Roeland Meyer's response to Harald Alvestrand.

Cheers,
Eric

WG-B is not cc'd for two reasons: I'm not a participant, and the subject
matter is outside of their scope.