1. What is going on on the Internet is not democracy even formally, because there is no formal voting. 3GPP, ETSI, 802.11 have voting. IETF decisions are made by bosses who did manage to gain power (primarily by establishing a proper network of relationships). It could be even called “totalitarian” because IETF bosses could stay in one position for decades.
2. Democracy does not work anywhere because unqualified people could be driven to make wrong decisions. Voting qualification check is mandatory, not everybody should have the right to vote for a particular question. I do not want to tell what was the qualification check in the early US or ancient Greece (where democracy was working) – because many would shout at me. It is not relevant to the technical group anyway. ETSI filters voting rights by money – the company should pay for memberships. 802.11 filter voting rights by the member's physical presence on the last 4 meetings. It is not ideal but it is better than no filtering at all. Eduard From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces+vasilenko.eduard=huawei....@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Abraham Y. Chen Sent: Monday, October 31, 2022 1:42 AM To: Noah <n...@neo.co.tz> Cc: North American Network Operators' Group <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: Jon Postel Re: 202210301538.AYC Dear Noah: 0) "Iterations often times leads back to the beginning.": Thanks for distilling this thread to a concise principle. Perhaps your name was given with the foresight of this discussion? 😉 1) As a newcomer to the arena, I have always been perplexed by the apparent collective NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome of the Internet community. While promoting openness, everything seems to go with "my way or noway". Of course, each Internet practice or convention was determined by some sort of consensus by majority opinion. However, once it gets going, it appears to be cast in concrete. There is a huge inertia against considering alternatives or improvements. Some of them even appear to be volunteered "policing" without full understanding of the background. Just like how practically all democratic governments are facing these days, a well-intended crowd can be led by an influencer to derail a social normality. It does not seem to me that strictly adhering to "one person one vote" rule can guide us toward a productive future. 2) To follow what you are saying, I wonder how could we think "out of the box" or go "back to the future", before it is too late for our world wide communications infrastructure to serve as a reliable daily tool without being a distraction constantly? That is, four decades should be long enough for our Internet experiments to be reviewed, so that we can try navigating out of the current chaos, or start with an alternative. Regards, Abe (2022-10-30 18:41 EDT) On 2022-10-30 12:47, Noah wrote: On Mon, 17 Oct 2022, 00:18 Randy Bush, <ra...@psg.com<mailto:ra...@psg.com>> wrote: my favorite is It's perfectly appropriate to be upset. Ack.... I thought of it in a slightly different way--like a space that we were exploring and, in the early days, we figured out this consistent path through the space: IP, TCP, and so on. the impact of IP, TCP in improving human life across the globe in the last decades can not be overstated. Human enginuity through names like Google have enabled the age of information and access to information through addresses and digital trade routes have continued to ensure peace for humanity on the positive side of the communications spectrum. What's been happening over the last few years is that the IETF is filling the rest of the space with every alternative approach, not necessarily any better. Every possible alternative is now being written down. And it's not useful. -- Jon Postel I suppose original human ideas and thoughts tends to stand the taste of time. Iterations often times leads back to the beginning. Noah [https://s-install.avcdn.net/ipm/preview/icons/icon-envelope-tick-round-orange-animated-no-repeat-v1.gif]<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient> Virus-free.www.avast.com<https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
