Re: IETF Last Call under RFC 3683 concerning JFC (Jefsey) Morfin

["JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey at jefsey.com>]

At 22:42 23/01/2006, Grossman Dan-LDG004 wrote:
> Unlike the previous
> matter of an individual who clearly engaged in threats and ad-homenem
> attacks, this appears perilously close to being an attempt to suppress a
> minority viewpoint.   Minority viewpoints need to be heard,
> regardless of whether the minority is a minority of one, and regardless
> of how persistent and how (in)articulate the minority may be.  This
> does not mean that the chair cannot find consensus against the minority
> view.  However, it strikes me as an abuse of process to revoke
> posting rights because the majority is tired of hearing the minority
> opinion.
>  
>  Mr. Morfin has been accused of straying into
> "off-topic" postings.  I cannot judge from the examples
> presented whether this is the case. However, I observe that setting WG
> scope can serve a constructive purpose in allowing the group to maintain
> focus by avoiding peripheral issues, or it can be a way of biasing the
> agenda toward a particular result, of ignoring important issues or of
> suppressing dissent.

Dear Dan,
you are perfectly correct. But in this case I faced a "second
level" case where an active minority made itself a majority, boring
everyone out but m,e because I needed for my own business survival to
impeach the market exclusive they were at building. 

So, I faced a Unicode affinity group which managed to appear as the
majority in presenting in the first WG-Chair's mail a complete Draft,
ready for IESG LC (it just failed as an individual Draft - they thought
that putting a WG stamp on it would be enough). Because of that, most of
the possibly interested experts did not contribute, or did not join. I
had been the most active in making the text fail the last call. I
therefore proposed to co-write the Draft (it would have been done in two
days with non-business biased people). The minority leader (WG-Chair)
refused. We then saw a long "consensus by exhaustion" because I
did not exhaust.

I balanced between starting a war with 10, 100 or 200 supporters. This
would have killed the IETF (look at the PR today, if we had tens of them
....) and convinced no one of the interest of the IETF. And crusading to
obtaining the text to be cleaned from most of its confusion, to make it
less dangerous. I explained that I will appeal the IESG, the IAB, the
IANA, the UNESCO, the ITU etc. etc. against the text until it matched its
Charter. The Charter has been written by the minority/majority group to
fool the IESG. It is not perfect but considering it, would have shown
many inconsistencies we start seeing now. My main opposition was
"consider the Charter" (in the IETF the IESG does not consider
the Charter anymore to accept a Draft).

I obtained everything I wanted:

- the text is now cleaner. It was adopted after the Tunis agreement.
- in parallel the WSIS confirmed my position about multilingualism (IAB
does not want to consider) calling for work on language codes
- via an appeal the IESG must review the security aspects which make the
text quite unusable (privacy violation)
- via an appeal the IAB must say if they want the IETF to consider the
usage/ethic impact of its decisions and the building of the Multilingual
Internet, or if these issues must be discussed elsewhere. 

This builds a situation where the "majority" loses its control
on the IETF or its control on the real Language Registry (not any more
the IANA). The choice is difficult. The PR action is a Denial of Thinking
to try the IESG and the IAB cannot set their mind. But this does not
bother me, because they will have "failed to respond". This is
why the need is to unconsiderate me.

Either the IETF maintains the Tunis Internet (the native proposition)
controlled by the USA and supported by the IANA. Or the IETF engages into
a new architecture based upon a distributed registry system (DRS). This
implies a user-centric usage architecture (which calls for a convergence
of the digital continuity). A technology and economical shift of
importance, the US industry and the IETF are not prepared to. This is why
the PR was prepared by an anti-EU set-up, opposing the WSIS positions -
to involvedthe IESG. At the end of the day if the IETF opposes everyone
it will have to go with Unicode ... look at the list of the Members and
of the Executives. 

They have been very candid. Before attacking me seriously (physical
allusions, anonymous calls, etc.[this is the IETF :-) and PR action) I
was once asked "do you realise how much you cost to the
industry?". I asked back "which industry?". The control of
the text industry is far bigger than music, pictures and games.... What
they do not understand is that its value comes from its diversity and
Liberty. 

If you are familiar with the French Minitel and Telematic, I use to say
that we (France) built the Minitel I, that the web is the Minitel II and
that we have now (mobiles, coreboxes, new appliances, network continuity)
to support the Minitel III phase. I happen to have experimented in real
life that architecture and to be in charge of its analysis and
international deployment (Tymnet). What I sold for $ 250.000 to State
monopolies 20 years ago, is what you should soon be able to giveaway in a
mobile to 3 billion people.

> Having been both in
> majorities and in minorities over the past 20 years or so, I know that
> process protection for minority rights is frustrating to the
> majority.  I also recognize that the minority is sometimes
> right.  Patient negotiation, no matter how difficult or time
> consuming, is the best remedy.

I spend my time pleading for consensus. The technical solution is easy
enough using RFC 4151 space. The problem is that they need an exclusive
(like ICANN vs. open roots). Negotiation would be like ICANN accepting
open roots.This is true that this is what ICANN does: with  NeuStar
and GSMA, with China, etc.

> I urge the IESG to
> give Mr. Morfin the benefit of the doubt. 

Thank you, but I am expandable. The IETF should not be. At least right
now.
Take care.

jfc


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