Link: http://www.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2003-January/ List: internet-history at postel d org Subject: (Re:) Cluster Addressing and CIDR Date: 13 Jan 2003++ Editor's note: "[...]" means cleaned/ deleted -- rms46 -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim] > "Internet Cluster Addressing Scheme", by Carl-Herbert Rokitanski/ > Fern Uni-Hagen, August 1989 > "Application of the Cluster Addressing Scheme to X.25 Public Data > Networks and Worldwide Internet Network Reachability Information > Exchange", by Carl-Herbert Rokitanski/Fern Uni-Hagen, August 1989, > > "Assignment/Reservation of Internet Network Numbers for the PDN-Cluster", > by Carl-Herbert Rokitanski/Fern Uni-Hagen, July 1989, > So, IDs could be as valuable as RFCs. Then, why imposing a 6 month limit for IDs, when diskspace is so cheap? regards, -- Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim -- vLSM.org -- http://rms46.vLSM.org -- -- Dear ALL: Enlarge your Peni^Hsion safely and naturally! ------ -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Joe Touch] > [...] > So, IDs could be as valuable as RFCs. > Then, why imposing a 6 month limit for IDs, when diskspace is so > cheap? The reason for ID disappearance has nothing to do with space. The IDs are deliberately ephemeral, intended to foster the open exchange of partial ideas. Establishing them as archival from the start imposes a hurdle that was percieved to inhibit this exchange. Some ideas do fall by the wayside, ideas which could have been archived as Informational RFCs, technical reports, or published papers. In cases where that has not been done, it was the authors' choice not to pursue that route. FYI... Joe -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Simone Molendini] > The reason for ID disappearance has nothing to do with space. > [...] You're right, but having a repository of the old drafts means saving almost all the (good or bad) Internet research in a much more complete manner than archiving the RFCs. IDs could be tagged as "WORK IN PROGRESS" and shifted to "HISTORICAL" once they expire after 6 months; these drafts could be saved into two different directories. I have a private collection of the drafts published in the last years: looking at the evolution of a protocol (e.g. CIDR) is a very useful exercise. BTW: Does the copyright prevent a site from allowng the access to old IDs ? Does a (non-official) repository of old drafts exist in the Internet? regards, Simone -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Joe Touch] > [...] > You're right, but having a repository of the old drafts means saving > almost all the (good or bad) Internet research in a much more complete > manner than archiving the RFCs. What this and several followups ignores is the impact on the authors. Authors will cease to present partially-complete ideas. There will be fewer work-in-progress drafts. There will, in summary, be less of this 'good or bad' research to preserve. Once the IDs become archival, they end up being an undistinguished tech report series. We already have them - all over the place. The thing that makes IDs unique is _exactly_ the fact that they are NOT archived. Were that property to disappear, there would be a void. Consider the impact on the stream of published information, as well as the fact that there are already other ways to publish archival information. Joe -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Lloyd Wood] [...] > What this and several followups ignores is the impact on the authors. > > Authors will cease to present partially-complete ideas. There will be > fewer work-in-progress drafts. There will, in summary, be less of this > 'good or bad' research to preserve. [...] Yes, but the process becomes increasingly formalised - originally RFCs were informal and barriers to publication were low. Now RFCs are formal and the draft process formalises the documents while rasising the barrier to publication as an RFC. I've increasingly seen draft deltas go to a small off-WG audience before popping up when submitted as an 'official' draft just before a meet closing deadline; I'm not sure that this is good, since it limits on-list discussion before the meet. I'm worried that the process will even become more formal still, if: http://ftp.ietf.org/iesg/iesg.2002-12-12 IP o Thomas to write (or cause to be written) a draft on "how to get to Draft" is anything to go by. L. oh, wait. Do they mean 'Draft Standard'? Stupid namespace collision. -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Joe Touch] > [...] > Yes, but the process becomes increasingly formalised - originally RFCs > were informal and barriers to publication were low. Now RFCs are > formal and the draft process formalises the documents while rasising > the barrier to publication as an RFC. > > I've increasingly seen draft deltas go to a small off-WG audience > before popping up when submitted as an 'official' draft just before a > meet closing deadline; I'm not sure that this is good, since it limits > on-list discussion before the meet. I'm not clear that the two are related. There are few barriers to putting out an ID, except timing. Due to the manual processing requirements and the desire for a modicum of sanity checking, it's infeasible to handle the burst of submissions before each IETF meeting without including a buffer period. This is the reason that many IDs submitted just before the deadline are concurrently posted to newsgroups; it allows open discussion while waiting for the burst to be processed. I agree that this isn't optimal - IMO, any idea that isn't sufficiently solid a few weeks before the IETF isn't sufficiently solid to warrant burning the $$ of people's time discussing it ;-) > I'm worried that the process will even become more formal still, if: > > http://ftp.ietf.org/iesg/iesg.2002-12-12 > IP o Thomas to write (or cause to be written) a draft on "how to > get to Draft" It's generally useful to help people design drafts in a way that reduces the repeated feedback from the RFC Editor. Most venues have some publication guidelines; it's not clear they're aiming at formalizing the process so much as providing editorial structure. Joe -------------------------------------------------------------------- [John Day] >Authors will cease to present partially-complete ideas. There will >be fewer work-in-progress drafts. There will, in summary, be less of >this 'good or bad' research to preserve. This is not the case and has not been the case with other groups. You can most other standards groups and find written contributions suggesting changes to all or part of a draft under development along with rationale as to why the change should be made. In some groups, you will even find a written record of how each comment or contribution on a document underdeveloped was dealt with and why. I have not noticed that the fact this material is available in the group's paper trail has any effect on the amount or quality of the contributions. >Once the IDs become archival, they end up being an undistinguished >tech report series. We already have them - all over the place. Depends on how they are dealt with. >The thing that makes IDs unique is _exactly_ the fact that they are >NOT archived. Were that property to disappear, there would be a void. No the problem we have is there is a void. To modify an old adage, those who can not know history are doomed to repeat it. Actually now that you mention it that may explain alot. > >Consider the impact on the stream of published information, as well >as the fact that there are already other ways to publish archival >information. Huh? Take care, John -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Joe Touch] > [...] > This is not the case and has not been the case with other groups. There are some people (myself included) who will cease to publish drafts. That decreases (by definition) the set of what is published; to the extent that others care, it will further decrease that set. > I have not noticed that the fact this material is available in the > group's paper trail has any effect on the amount or quality of the > contributions. That's nearly impossible to measure. We have no series that was explicitly not archived then archived to compare. All we have are different communities right now. ... >> The thing that makes IDs unique is _exactly_ the fact that they are >> NOT archived. Were that property to disappear, there would be a void. > > No the problem we have is there is a void. To modify an old adage, > those who can not know history are doomed to repeat it. Actually now > that you mention it that may explain alot. There always was, and continues to be a path for publication that some draft authors have chosen and others have not. Draft authors can always submit documents for Informational RFC; some have, others have not. Although there are some submissions which have been rejected (every system has its minimum standards), overall we already have a solution to this problem, and it doesn't involve archiving all drafts for historical purposes. I agree that the world is less informed by not having the intermediate forms of "the Shining", e.g. That is as it has been - the choice of the author. All we do by archiving drafts is to take the ephemeral track away. Joe -------------------------------------------------------------------- [John Day] >Yes, but the process becomes increasingly formalised - originally RFCs >were informal and barriers to publication were low. Now RFCs are >formal and the draft process formalises the documents while rasising >the barrier to publication as an RFC. That is more because for some Orwellian reason Requests for Comments became Standards and Internet Draft (which sounds like a preliminary standard) become comments. But we have hashed that issue before elsewhere. It is still pretty informal. >I've increasingly seen draft deltas go to a small off-WG audience >before popping up when submitted as an 'official' draft just before a >meet closing deadline; I'm not sure that this is good, since it limits >on-list discussion before the meet. But it is typical behavior as committees age, the participation broadens, and people participating are playing their own agendas. This one of the oldest games in the book. >I'm worried that the process will even become more formal still, if: > >http://ftp.ietf.org/iesg/iesg.2002-12-12 >IP o Thomas to write (or cause to be written) a draft on "how to > get to Draft" > >is anything to go by. My experience is that formality creeps in primarily as the process is abused. The more it is abused the more necessary it is to make rules about things where it could be assumed that good and fair behavior would prevail. As the stakes increase, that becomes less the case. The only way for it not to happen is to work on things that few people care about! Either because they don't know it is important or because it isn't! Take care, John -------------------------------------------------------------------- [David P. Reed] The long-term history of ideas is hurt by the non-preservation of ID's, etc. The ideas had influence, almost certainly, even if they turned out to be weak or "wrong". One of the problems with scientific progress is the lack of documentation of experiments that didn't pan out, because the authors are presumed to have "failed" and want to avoid embarrassment. Most of us, if we are honest, have learned far more from making mistakes and debugging them. Why then, do we refuse to pass on our hard-won knowledge? This is not because of science, but because of ego-driven fear. [...] -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan] I absolutely agree with this thread (Rahmat/David/Simone's comments) on preserving IDs to record the evolution of design, i.e. our history. The "path" can be more interesting than the "end result". Since my focus (this last year ) has been on the early Arpanet design issues, I have been aided by the abundance of RFCs which discuss a specific design. (of course, I still wish that more minutes of the design meetings were preserved -- if anyone has any non-published minutes 1969-1974 please let me know ....;-) ------> It's important to note that the early RFCs functioned in the role of both of the following: * today's Internet Drafts, and * email: some of the early RFCs would today just have been in today's email archives of the working groups. While current IETF working groups seem to be great about archiving email, a similar issue of lost resources seems to be occurring when working groups conclude. At this point, no email archive is linked into the IETF web pages that describe the work of the concluded groups... http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/OLD/index.html So, I suggest that the IETF web masters should archive the concluded email as well. Thanks, Chris [...] -- The University of Texas at Austin TAY 4.136; Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan Computer Sciences Department 1 University Station C0500 URL: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/ Austin, TX 78712-1188 Fedex: please send to Taylor Hall 2.124 -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Joe Touch] > [...] > So, I suggest that the IETF web masters should archive > the concluded email as well. I agree that archiving mail that was archived to begin with would be useful. I'm opposed to archiving intermediate process when the authors explicitly chose to provide a non-archival form. If authors want to archive their results, they are free to publish them in more conventional venues, even in their intermediate form. When someone says "this is off the record" it is off the record. That's what IDs are, very explicitly. Joe -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Geoff Huston] >The thing that makes IDs unique is _exactly_ the fact that they are NOT >archived. Were that property to disappear, there would be a void. This is a curious claim in so far as they _are_ archived, all over the world in thousands of locations. There is no concept in today's world of being able to 'unpublish" anything, or to be able to withdraw a document from the online public space. IETF meeting proceedings publish and archive the drafts used by the WGs at the time. Google has more than an significant number of hits for expired drafts, and so on. Regardless of the merits of Joe's arguments, and I must admit that there is considerable merit in his view of the role of drafts, the harsh reality is that these documents do not and will not disappear from public availability. Accordingly, It makes more sense to me to recognize and work within the characteristics and properties of the world we live in than to insist that somehow something that is happening should not happen and that we should behave as if it is not happening. But this is well beyond Internet History and I will not post further on this topic to this mailer. My apologies for the diversion. regards, Geoff -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Joe Touch] > [...] > This is a curious claim in so far as they _are_ archived, all over the > world in thousands of > locations. Agreed. Though personal use archives are different from "available for others publicly", at least according to copyright law. > There is no concept in today's world of being able to > 'unpublish" anything, or to > be able to withdraw a document from the online public space. IETF > meeting proceedings > publish and archive the drafts used by the WGs at the time. Google has > more than an > significant number of hits for expired drafts, and so on. And, as Geoff and I have discussed elswhere, there are those of us who are glad to educate those who illegally post documents for which they do not hold copyright. I.e., that there are archives and they are public does not make them either legal or appropriate. > Regardless of the merits of Joe's arguments, and I must admit that there > is considerable > merit in his view of the role of drafts, the harsh reality is that these > documents > do not and will not disappear from public availability. Accordingly, It > makes more sense > to me to recognize and work within the characteristics and properties > of the world we > live in than to insist that somehow something that is happening should > not happen and > that we should behave as if it is not happening. The world we live in includes many things that are illegal and/or inappropriate. I hope we strive to rise above and/or correct those things, rather than admit defeat per se. Joe -------------------------------------------------------------------- [David P. Reed] At 07:34 AM 1/14/2003 -0800, Joe Touch wrote: >Authors will cease to present partially-complete ideas. There will be >fewer work-in-progress drafts. There will, in summary, be less of this >'good or bad' research to preserve. This claim raises two issues: 1. The assertion that "authors will cease..." unless things they write are deleted from institutional memory (or at least not actively preserved) is falsifiable by straightforward experimental evidence. There is no need to claim it without proof. It does indeed remind me of the idea that the POTUS and his office should be immune from sunlight in their contacts with lobbyists, etc. lest those lobbyists be unwilling to share their true views. 2. Shouldn't the authors be given the choice to preserve in an archival form their thoughts, along with all other IDs, etc. in such a way that makes it much less work for historians and students of design options to understand old proposals? -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Joe Touch] > [...] > This claim raises two issues: > > 1. The assertion that "authors will cease..." unless things they write > are deleted from institutional memory (or at least not actively > preserved) is falsifiable by straightforward experimental evidence. There are IDs which authors chose not to publish as RFCs or as tech reports elsewhere. Thus concludes the contradiction of the falsification. By those examples, removing all documents that authors never intended for archival publication reduces the set of IDs. > 2. Shouldn't the authors be given the choice to preserve in an archival > form their thoughts, along with all other IDs, etc. in such a way that > makes it much less work for historians and students of design options to > understand old proposals? They are - Informational RFCs. Note that not all IDs went that route. Again, proof by example. IMO, the authors should continue to be given the choice they already have - NOT to publish archivally. They already have the alternate choice in spades. Joe -------------------------------------------------------------------- [David P. Reed] Fair use is explicitly part of copyright law. History is clearly a policy goal of fair use. IANAL, but I would expect that there is precedent protecting people who share personal archives of documents for the purpose of historical research. Just a reminder from someone dedicated to educating people that copyright includes rights of fair use, as well as other exceptions. Electronic rights are complex, as well. The Internet crosses jurisdictions, and documents such as IDs are published in many locations at once, so the right to "unpublish" is determined by jurisdiction. IMO, standing behind copyright really distorts the issue of desirable dissemination of knowledge and scientific knowledge, in particular. -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Joe Touch] David P. Reed wrote: > Fair use is explicitly part of copyright law. History is clearly a > policy goal of fair use. IANAL, but I would expect that there is > precedent protecting people who share personal archives of documents for > the purpose of historical research. I cannot provide you with a photographic copy of copyrighted material without the permission of the publisher. You can make one for yourself, but you cannot distribute it. That precedent already exists for paper works. IANAL either, but I would expect that this is a reasonable analog, and that regardless of the "public good" of distributing those copies "for historical purposes," it would still be a blatent violation of copyright law. > Just a reminder from someone dedicated to educating people that > copyright includes rights of fair use, as well as other exceptions. > Electronic rights are complex, as well. The Internet crosses > jurisdictions, and documents such as IDs are published in many locations > at once, so the right to "unpublish" is determined by jurisdiction. "unpublish" is a bit misleading. When IDs are published, they are distributed by the IETF by authority of the author under explicit time-limited terms. Once those terms cease, (again, IANAL), it seems that further public distribution constitutes continued "publication", and would be a violation of copyright law. I cannot remove it from everyone's personal archives, but I believe I can prevent anyone from passing it on to anyone else, whether posting it for the 'public good' or otherwise. > IMO, standing behind copyright really distorts the issue of desirable > dissemination of knowledge and scientific knowledge, in particular. Doing things that violate private rights for the "public good," despite the current fashion, are detestable. Joe -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Ted Faber] > [...] > Doing things that violate private rights for the "public good," despite > the current fashion, are detestable. You're posting angry again, Joe. :-) That statement is false on its face (and I think your earlier statements about your rights to stop publication were also a little too sweeping). Most laws are about balancing public goods and private rights, and I know you know it. My private right to free speech is violated in crowded movie houses all over the country for the public good of avoiding mass tramplings. Maybe you'd like to unpublish this one. :-) -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Ted Faber] On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 04:53:55PM -0500, David P. Reed wrote: > Fair use is explicitly part of copyright law. History is clearly a policy > goal of fair use. IANAL, but I would expect that there is precedent > protecting people who share personal archives of documents for the purpose > of historical research. Fair use is deep water with dangerous currents. I'm not a lawyer, either, but I wouldn't try to assert a fair use claim in the face of opposition without one either. I'd want to see that precedent before I'd rely on there being one. More to the point, I'd want my laywer to see that precedent. Keeping a private collection of documents and allowing specific people access to them for historical puproses is one thing, making a collection of documents publically available is another. Anything intended to be detected by Google feels more like the former than the latter to me. The UCLA film library can't start showing their copyrighted films to the general public on a regular basis no matter how noble or scholarly their intent. > > Just a reminder from someone dedicated to educating people that copyright > includes rights of fair use, as well as other exceptions. Electronic > rights are complex, as well. The Internet crosses jurisdictions, and > documents such as IDs are published in many locations at once, so the right > to "unpublish" is determined by jurisdiction. It's not at all clear to me that the idea of unpublishing has been legally tested. I don't know if there's any legal precedent at all. For all I know, the very idea of unpublishing something may well be a nonsense idea in the legal world. I'd love to see a relevant legal citation. I'm just worrying about the US system, though you are correct that the Internet situation is even more complex. > > IMO, standing behind copyright really distorts the issue of desirable > dissemination of knowledge and scientific knowledge, in particular. Perhaps, but cranky ID authors are not the primary problem in this regard. Many conferences and journals also enforce copyright on scientific knowledge. More practically, if people are concerned about keeping the majority of the IDs available, the simplest tack is not to futz with the lawyers, but to get the IDs, set up a website and make them available. When an ID expires (a situation detectable with a perl script) mail the author (their e-mail address is also part of the ID) and request permission to archive the thing. If the author says OK, you leave the copy up (perhaps appending a notice that the expired draft appears with the author's permission), otherwise you delete the draft. The whole thing can be largely automated (including the author's reply for prolific authors). I suspect that the negative responses would be very few. Results: ID's (other than authors who'd be a pain about it anyway) legally archived in the web for posterity, and I don't have to hear this argument for the one thousand and first time. ------------------------------------------------------------------- [Joe Touch] > [...] > You're posting angry again, Joe. :-) > > That statement is false on its face (and I think your earlier statements > about your rights to stop publication were also a little too sweeping). > Most laws are about balancing public goods and private rights, and I > know you know it. My private right to free speech is violated in > crowded movie houses all over the country for the public good of > avoiding mass tramplings. > > Maybe you'd like to unpublish this one. :-) Unpublishing isn't the issue, FWIW; the issue is permission to publish for a finite period of time. That's fairly common. When the granted time expires, the source is no longer permitted to publish. Putting things on web servers is publishing. I never said I could erase things from archives, just prohibit them from being put on web servers everyone could access. As to balancing public good, I agree. I said _violate_, not balance. Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------- [John Day] > [...] >There are some people (myself included) who will cease to publish >drafts. That decreases (by definition) the set of what is published; >to the extent that others care, it will further decrease that set. Somehow I doubt that ;-) but statistically I think you would find that the number who would not submit contributions would be insignificant. And since no one person's ideas are so important that the rest can not get on without them, it is doubtful they would be missed. This effort is not personal, it is stochastic. > [...] >That's nearly impossible to measure. We have no series that was >explicitly not archived then archived to compare. All we have are >different communities right now. Actually, not true. If you look at IEEE, T1, ISO, ITU, ANSI, ABA, IEC, and many other groups you will find that such paper trails exist and perhaps not readily available they are available. > [...] >There always was, and continues to be a path for publication that >some draft authors have chosen and others have not. Draft authors >can always submit documents for Informational RFC; some have, others >have not. Although there are some submissions which have been >rejected (every system has its minimum standards), overall we >already have a solution to this problem, and it doesn't involve >archiving all drafts for historical purposes. > >I agree that the world is less informed by not having the >intermediate forms of "the Shining", e.g. That is as it has been - >the choice of the author. All we do by archiving drafts is to take >the ephemeral track away. This is not at all the case. Science is a much different process than writing a novel. The exploration of the domain of inquiry and the process by which it takes place is as important as the final answer. More often than not the process may provide more understanding for the next problem than the answer ever will. Take care, John ------------------------------------------------------------------- [Joe Touch] > [...] > Somehow I doubt that ;-) but statistically I think you would find that > the number who would not submit contributions would be insignificant. OK - so we disagree on what might happen. > [...] > Actually, not true. If you look at IEEE, T1, ISO, ITU, ANSI, ABA, IEC, > and many other groups you will find that such paper trails exist and > perhaps not readily available they are available. That is not a metric. You are not citing groups that changed policies; they were archival from the start. Agreed that they have open exchange, but by design. > [...] > This is not at all the case. Science is a much different process than > writing a novel. The exploration of the domain of inquiry and the > process by which it takes place is as important as the final answer. > More often than not the process may provide more understanding for the > next problem than the answer ever will. That may be the case, but it is the authors' decision, absent a-priori arrangements of a forum (e.g., this forum is archived, and that is known by participants when they sign-up). IDs are a place where exploration comes without the threat of persistent archives of proposals, _by design_. As mentioned before, there are plenty of other archival forums, including RFCs themselves. Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------- [Andrew Russell] >My experience is that formality creeps in primarily as the process >is abused. The more it is abused the more necessary it is to make >rules about things where it could be assumed that good and fair >behavior would prevail. As the stakes increase, that becomes less >the case. The only way for it not to happen is to work on things >that few people care about! Either because they don't know it is >important or because it isn't! From my research into the early institution-building of Internet standards (ICCB, IAB, IETF), it seems that another reason for building in formality is to allow open participation. As participation and interest grow, so too must the governing structures. The history of ICCB, IAB, and IETF suggests that this sort of scalable governance was a key to the growth of the Internet - I've got a work-in-progress on some of this political and cultural history, a paper is available from http://aconcept51.com/arussell/. I would love to hear comments, stories, etc if anyone's interested in contributing. As for historians using Internet Drafts - anyone faithful to the Guidelines for Internet Drafts ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt will note that the first paragraph states: "These documents should not be cited or quoted in any formal document." That's pretty clear. On the surface, I don't see any harm in looking up an old ID in a personal archive or on google, especially if it helps the thinking process. We'll know things are getting out of hand when the lawyers come in and the IETF begins a RIAA-style crackdown on distribution of old IDs.... Andy http://ucsub.colorado.edu/~russelal/ ------------------------------------------------------------------- [John Day] > [...] >From my research into the early institution-building of Internet >standards (ICCB, IAB, IETF), it seems that another reason for >building in formality is to allow open participation. As >participation I don't see how formality allows open participation. Generally, the minimal number of rules is best and then only to ensure fair participation. My experience has been that the number of rules and the formality of the process increases either when fairness is abused or one group attempts to maintain control of the process. The first is a case where without written rules some try to use the fact that "there is no rule that says I can't" to abuse a fair and reasonable process. Initially there were very few if any written rules. My understanding is that the rules in place came about when it became clear that the IETF/IESG/IAB etc. needed to be able to ensure that a process was followed that would not subject it to law suits or claims of anti-trust behavior. The process was and always has been about as open as you can get without formality. Frankly, I think the current process is so open that it provides the perfect disguise for manipulation by anyone with the resources to play the game. Take care, John ------------------------------------------------------------------- [Andrew Russell] >[...] >I don't see how formality allows open participation. Generally, the >minimal number of rules is best and then only to ensure fair >participation. My experience has been that the number of rules and >the formality of the process increases either when fairness is >abused or one group attempts to maintain control of the process. >The first is a case where without written rules some try to use the >fact that "there is no rule that says I can't" to abuse a fair and >reasonable process. In this case I would think that the creation of rules is a healthy development for preserving a fair and reasonable process. >Initially there were very few if any written rules. My >understanding is that the rules in place came about when it became >clear that the IETF/IESG/IAB etc. needed to be able to ensure that >a process was followed that would not subject it to law suits or >claims of anti-trust behavior. The process was and always has been >about as open as you can get without formality. Frankly, I think >the current process is so open that it provides the perfect disguise >for manipulation by anyone with the resources to play the game. More formal structures allow a body to move away from a small "council of elders," thus making leadership somewhat accountable to the participants. Comparatively, the IETF has a minimum of rules and institutional structures; but those rules keep the process consistent, and therefore make the IETF more reliable as an institution. Without formal rules, a small group of people could make decisions that don't have broad support (such as was alleged of the IAB with CLNP in 1992). It's a classic constitution-building question - how much authority and structure is needed to preserve freedom? Is it too easy to manipulate the system? Cheers, Andy ------------------------------------------------------------------- [Mike Padlipsky] [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------- [Joe Touch] > [...] There are two separate threads that I have promoted: 1) that the rules cannot be changed retroactively 2) that the current rules are desirable and provide the characteristic uniqueness of the ID series, and should be preserved. I accept that authors do, will, and have always had the chance to opt-in to a public archive. Perhaps paradoxically, I have vigorously defended my right to refuse permission to others to post my prior IDs (at least the ones that I was primary author on), but continue to serve some on my own website and have offered them without hesitation to individuals who requested them. > granted, that might just make me a swine, before whom perls shldn't be > dropped, but how about a simpler approach? update whatever rfc [or > other series] document it was that established the 6-month lifetime for > 'id's', or write a new one if necessary, and, explicitly in light of the > _possible_ 'historical' value of making the information available for > more than 6 months, add a provision that when submitted, 'id's' may be > declared by their authors to be archivable after 'expiration', iff [sic] > the authors choose to make such declaration. The ID "RFC" 'rules' state only that the IETF assures that it will serve the drafts for 6 months, and that they are not to be cited as other than work in progress. Authors could always declare their works in the public domain, thus allowing anyone to serve them. It's simple - something akin to "Right is hereby granted, in perpituity, for non-profit use and disemmination of this document." I have issue only that this not be required as a condition of publication of IDs, to ensure that the past character of the IDs as ephemeral (when desired, as always) is retained. Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------- [David P. Reed] At 03:16 PM 1/14/2003 -0800, Joe Touch wrote: >Doing things that violate private rights for the "public good," despite >the current fashion, are detestable. Copyright exists ONLY for the public good. If it fails to improve the public good, and serves only private interests, the Government should no longer provide it. It's not a natural law, it is merely a synthetic construct, constructed and enforced by the Government. There are no "private rights" to transmit information to others, but then constrain what they do with it. The most interesting analogy is in the patent law. Once you share an invention with others, you lose the right to exclude, unless you use patents, in which case you gain a purely synthetic right for a very limited time, crafted entirely because of a public good argument.