Re: IAHC Consensus

[David Collier-Brown <davecb@Canada.Sun.COM>]

Jim Fleming wrote:
> Also, other people, like myself, will not participate for a variety
> of reasons. One should not draw consensus conclusions too
> quickly. The commercial marketplace may have a completely
> different view of consensus.

	With respect, that's silly.  Consensus is something
	you can look up in a dictionary.  There is no
	such things as different kinds of consensus.

	The commercial marketplace may well come to a consensus opinion,
	and that may be quite different from what you, I or
	any broad-based group comes to, but if they do not
	elsct to be part of the process and raise their
	concerns, they can hardly expect to be heard.

	By the way, the process is usually called ``initiative and 
	consensus'': one person or group makes a proosal, everyone
	affected by it contributes, and the group produces a
	recommendation.  At the next level up, the decision is
	political, not technical, and the recommendation may
	be accepted, rejected, voted upon or put to a referendum.

> Also, it is not clear if the IAHC has the NSF's consensus
> or Network Solutions, Inc.'s buy in. The ISOC show-cased
> NSI in the original IAHC press release but as far as I have
> seen, NSI has not participated in the discussions. Again,
> what agreement does the IAHC have that NSI will abide
> by the IAHC decisions ? What about the other 8 Popular
> Root Name Server operators ?

	Well, organizations which choose to go against the
	broad consensus of the internet community take
	significant technical risks.  Just as people who
	misinterpret the  TCP specs risk rejection by
	anyone who depends on proper operation. If NSI
	were to try to claim the root servers or .com domain
	were ``theirs'' over the objections of the ISOC
	and NSF, they would find themselves in a **remarkably
	embaressing** position.  Indeed, if that happened your
	experimental root servers might see a sudden surge in 
	popularity (:-))

--dave
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | Always do right. This will gratify some people
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