Re: Your cards...

[Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>]

At 1:46 PM -0800 12/5/96, Rick H. Wesson wrote:

> I now understand why you all have been flameing these lists
> and whineing about FCFS, how evil the IANA is, and your general
> diatane for the IAHC. You all have what you believed is a
> right to the TLDs you submitted to the IANA.
>

Surprise! Not. ;-)

As I'm the first on the list, I suppose this is now all my fault. I'm
the bad guy for pointing out that the knife is sharp and it might cut
you if not handled correctly? Cool. Someone's IQ is showing.

I don't believe I have any more right than any other applicant has to
their respective request. But I do know that the written policy in RFC
1591 states all TLDs requests must be treated equally. Since RFC 1591,
and many of the TLD requests pre-date ALL the current drafts and
recently formed committees, there can be no "retroactive" policy.
Otherwise, this just repeats some identical events to the ones that
triggered this whole situation in the first place. I don't want to go
there again, or see the 'net become fragmented as a result of some
well-positioned egos that think every TLD applicant is just out for the
money.

Plus, nobody stops to consider that these are applications for TLDs to
be created, and not specifically applications for an organization to
become a delegated registry. The two are assumed to go hand in hand
because of domain registry history and draft-postel. Why? This is a
wrong assumption if there are going to be shared-tlds. Now I need to
add that line to the draft... ;)

> Is it in the best interest of the net for you to be deligated
> the authority over these TLDS? I hope the IAHC will decide that.
>

I hope so too. The overall charter for the IAHC, according to Don
Heath, is "to do the right thing."

> I do wish that you would all give up the flameage now that we all
> know why you have been whineing so much about this topic. Greed
> does blind....
>

Uh huh. I'm sooooo very greedy that I set up the shared-tld mailing
list to promote SHARING TLDs. Something that strikes fear into the
darkest recesses of any VC fund manager's credibility. Gimme a break.

And I certainly wouldn't be on the fourth version of
draft-higgs-tld-cat if money was my objective. It's written to address
these issues that were not around two years ago to be included.

> I do hope the IAHC does look more at the qualifications of applicatnts
> and not when they submited an application for a TLD. We are talking
> about the smooth running of the name space not about personal
> profit potential of some very loud individuals.
>

The problem again is that the requests, according to RFC 1591, have to
be treated exactly like any other domain (2LD, 3LD). Currently this is
still first-come first-served.

      There are no requirements on subdomains of top-level domains
      beyond the requirements on higher-level domains themselves.  That
      is, the requirements in this memo are applied recursively.

And I'd still say this if my name were not on the list. It has nothing
to do with any applications that I've sent in. It has everything with
addressing past, present, and future policies to the satisfaction of
the internet population as a whole. The consequences are lot's of bad
press and the loss of public trust, creating a fracture in the internet
authority structure. If you want that to happen, throw out all the
applications now.


Simon

--
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.