[wg-review] (Consensus) "Rough" Consensus ambiguity

[Sotiropoulos <sotiris@hermesnetwork.com>]

Since the issue of Consensus, "rough" and otherwise is such a hot issue on the List, I have something to offer which many will indubitably find quite 
interesting, particularly when one considers the credentials of the persons involved.  Here it is, enjoy:

Comments made by David Clark in a transcripted conversation with Jonathan Zittrain entitled: "On the Issue of Domain Names..." (1997):
___________________________________________________
DC: I once said, we had a war inside the--you know, this is a very personal community--we had a war and
lynched our leaders because they made a mistake, and so we threw them all out. We had a real purge, and I was asked
after that to give a calming talk, which was a little weird, and so I invented a saying in trying to describe our community, both its strengths and 
weaknesses, and I said, "We reject kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in
rough consensus and a running code." Somebody made that into a T-shirt and printed out one thousand copies.
   It is true that any time anybody stands up and offers to leave, this particular community kills them
first and then asks why, because if you want to leave, you must have self-interest, and therefore we don't trust
you.

JZ: Say it again.

DC: We reject kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in rough consensus and a running code," where rough consensus was
deliberately ambiguous concerning whether the consensus and its final product were ... (inaudible) or the process
was ... (inaudible). The answer was both are true. But whenever anybody stands up and says, "I want to leave," this
community's reflexive reaction is to not trust them. And so it kills them in a minute. So Jon (Postel) is one of the few
people with stature, because he's been around so long and his credentials are so impeccable. He's never made a
judgment that looked as if it smacked of self-interest or idiocy. And so, yeah, the issue of literally replacing him
is a fascinating one. And I thought he was going to resign last year when he got sued."
************************************************
I want to point out the line: "We believe in rough consensus and a running code," where rough consensus was
deliberately ambiguous..."  My question: If "rough consensus" was deliberately ambiguous in '97, what makes it any more coherent in 2001?

If you're wondering what the "community" mentioned above is, Jonanthan Zittrain provides the following answer in the same conversation:
______________________________________________________
Open Floor Question: "What's the community--I heard a couple of times, the community said this or that, the community did
this or that.

JZ:  We've always viewed that the designers of the Internet are an open, self-selecting set of people,
and the Internet engineering test works meetings are open to anybody, anybody can come. We try to keep the
registration fee down, we don't change the names, the meetings are open, we announce them on the Net, and that group
of people--especially those who have come enough that they feel that they can open their mouths without getting
inflamed--are in some sense a body of the whole. We have an open house every Thursday night, and the area directors,
the guys who are responsible for the thirteen areas, put on T-shirts with bulls' eyes on the front, and they go sit
up there and anybody can say anything they want. ... (inaudible) on-line, or it's just you have to be--"
______________________________________________________

I think everyone on this List MUST read the entire conversation, if only to get a flavour of how things got to where they are today.  The entire transcript 
can be found at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/fallsem97/trans/clark/


Sotiris Sotiropoulos
          Hermes Network, Inc.







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