Subject: [weirds] Proposed charters

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:26:16 -0500

Dear colleagues,

As far as I know, the attached represent all the competing charter
versions that have recently been posted.  I modified the text I
proposed with the most recent suggestions, I think.  Files are named
with the initals of the person who proposed.

If anyone has another competitor to enter, please do so.

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Peter Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:44:09 +0100

Andrew,

> with the initals of the person who proposed.

thanks for this work.  What is the next step, are we going to gauge
consensus on either of these?

-Peter

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:30:16 -0500

> consensus on either of these?

AFAICS, the next step is either (1) ADs step in and say, "We are not
going to charter you for xyz because of XYZ," or (2) we have another
BoF.  Or, of course, (3) the effort to set up a WG fails.

There seems to be a hard core of people extremely resistant to
chartering with names on the deliverable list (and FWIW, I got the
threat of an appeal from someone not active on this list, but who was
in the BoF, last week, should the WG get chartered with names on the
milestones).  There seems also to be a hard core of people who think
that any WG that is chartered without explicitly including names in
the deliverables puts name-type problems at a disadvantage and is some
sort of prejudice.

I requested another BoF, with working out the charter the only agenda
item.  We'll see what the ADs say.  In the meantime, I strongly advise
those interested in names issues to show the prima facie evidence of
progress and proto-consensus that is so obvious among number resource
registry people.  Running code is a very powerful argument against
sceptics.

I have on my list of projects at Dyn Labs an experimental names
system.  The problem in my case is that Dyn is only a registrar.  In
the absence of some registry for which Dyn is accredited actually
offering the service too, it will be pretty hard for me to show
anything like a useful service.  (Indeed, this is precisely one of the
arguments in favour of starting with numbers: it's not an impossible
effort to get started.)

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Carlos Martinez-Cagnazzo <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:32:02 -0200

One topic that I do not find in the proposed charters' text is the topic 
of redirections (a la 'Joint WHOIS').

Should it be in scope? In my personal opinion, yes, it should be.

We (LACNIC) have some draft text and a working prototype of a 
redirection service already working. The text received positive reviews 
from those from other RIRs who looked at it and we plan to present it to 
WEIRDS once it has a more presentable form.

If anyone wants to take a look at its current form, please let us know.

regards

Carlos

On 2/14/12 6:44 AM, Peter Koch wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> weirds mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/weirds

---

From: Andy Newton <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:43:07 -0500

> Should it be in scope? In my personal opinion, yes, it should be.

Yes.

-andy

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:50:53 -0500

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 01:32:02PM -0200, Carlos Martinez-Cagnazzo wrote:
> One topic that I do not find in the proposed charters' text is the
> topic of redirections (a la 'Joint WHOIS').

RFC 3707 is included by reference at least in all the text I've sent.
That RFC includes this text:

4.2.  Referrals

   To distribute queries for search continuations and to issue entity
   references, the protocol MUST provide a referral mechanism.

4.3.  Common Referral Mechanism

   To distribute queries for search continuations and to issue entity
   references, the protocol MUST define a common referral scheme and
   syntax.

So I think that redirections or referrals are in fact already
included.  

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:23:45 -0800

>BoF.  Or, of course, (3) the effort to set up a WG fails.

It sounds like a stalemate.

>the deliverables puts name-type problems at a disadvantage and is some

The less controversial part of the work might be the object 
specifications.  The proposed charter could have these two initial 
deliverables only:

     Draft WEIRDS object specifications for number resource
     registries to IESG for publication as an Experimental RFC.

     Draft WEIRDS object specifications for name registries
     to IESG for publication as an Experimental RFC.

If the future working group can deliver the above, it should be 
easier to work on a protocol.  The above buys everyone a working 
group and allows anyone to express their discontent.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Dave Piscitello <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:48:31 -0800

On Feb 14, 2012, at 10:30 AM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> chartering with names on the deliverable list

I'd like a head count.

> (and FWIW, I got the
> milestones).  

I'm sorry. I don't understand how this is relevant or appropriate. 
How exactly do you threaten volunteers and with what? 
And why is a volunteer making threats instead of engaging on the list?
Isn't the process supposed to be open? 

> There seems also to be a hard core of people who think

Again, a head count. 

> registry people.  Running code is a very powerful argument against

Fine. 
We now have a second experiment under development for a registry that ICANN operates. 
We need a few tweeks to make it ready for public consumption (uses an overly trivial data model, for example).

That makes 2 ICANN implementations, one commitment from Gavin Brown, another from Michael Young.

Is four experiments sufficient prima facie evidence of progress?

Other registries have indicated they will contribute: from various posts on this list I find some indication of suport from UK, CNNIC, and Afilias). From Franciso's email of 3 February I find this assertion:

"However, after Taipei a number of entities, e.g., Afilias, AusRegistry,
CNNIC, ICANN, ISC, Nominet, .MX, Verisign, etc. have expressed their
interest in developing the name registries part."

There is "proto consensus" that the work is desirable and there is a commitment to make public a data profile for name resources from ICANN's SSAC. 

Please advise.
 
> anything like a useful service.  

Dyn Labs or IMO generally any registrar could in fact operate a web/curl service as an experimental proxy:

- - accept RESTful queries
- - transform these into  "plain text" queries
- - query the target TLD
- - normalize TLD responses into the name resource data profile
- - return the normalized data

Such implementations would allow end users to participate on the consumption end. This would be very useful for heavy users of Whois, who may want to plan/design automation. Companies that have a large exposure to phishing/spam, online brand protection companies, antispam/anticrime/antiabuse groups may all find this kind of effort beneficial.

So I think your implementation would add value.

> (Indeed, this is precisely one of the

I think you miss an important point. The existence of contractual obligations. These play a role in real world scenarios other than domain registries and registrars as well. These affect deployment commitments but they also make it important that there is considerable stability in what is proposed in a contract. Lead time is an important impetus to define the name resources part of this work as soon as possible.

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 14 Feb 2012 16:48:44 -0000

>Should it be in scope? In my personal opinion, yes, it should be.

Yes, definitely.  Having written and used my share of WHOIS scrapers,
I've observed one of the few things that just about all WHOIS servers
have in common is a response saying go ask that other server for the
answer.

This doesn't need to be in the charter, just something we keep in mind.

R's,
John

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:48:11 -0500

Dave,

> > chartering with names on the deliverable list

Then count.  I'm not in charge here.  And anyway, I don't see what a
count is supposed to do.  The way one gets a WG chartered at the IETF
is to hold a BoF.  In the BoF we heard a lot of resistance to names
work right away.  The reason for that is something you touch on, so
I'll address it below.

> I think you miss an important point. The existence of contractual
> obligations. These play a role in real world scenarios other than
> domain registries and registrars as well. These affect deployment
> commitments but they also make it important that there is
> considerable stability in what is proposed in a contract. Lead time
> is an important impetus to define the name resources part of this
> work as soon as possible.

Nobody is missing this point; on the contrary, this is _exactly_ why
some people are sceptical that the names problem is going to get any
traction.  The existing contractual obligations are for Whois.
Replacing Whois is a non-zero cost, and Whois service is all cost and
no revenue anyway.  If you listen to Klensin's complaints in the BoF
(the link I posted yesterday), that's what he's saying: ICANN simply
cannot mandate this change on its own, it doesn't have the power to
force others to do anything, and history suggests that it may not be
able to broker the compromise.

The approach you are talking about is, basically, "Build it and they
will come."  The problem is that the IETF did that with IRIS, and with
RWhois, and maybe even with Whois++.  "Crickets."  An incremental
approach that tackles the easy problems, with fewer contractual
entanglements, first, while providing a way to make progress on those
harder problems at the same time if the people needed to make that
progress actually do the work, looks to many like the easier path.

Let's think about this another way.  We know from history that when
some registries were faced with levels of "domain tasting" that were
important enough to them, they thought of some mitigation strategies
to those problems first, built the necessary SRS parts, and then
turned to ICANN with those developments in hand and asked for the
necessary contractual changes to permit the new mechanisms.  What
ICANN actually permitted in the end was slightly different than the
initial proposals, but a key fact here is that there was already
technical work in hand when the contractual negotiations started.

Today, we are looking at the same pattern in number resource
registries: those registries have developed alternatives to Whois, and
they're now working together to nail down the details of a common
approach.

We see no such actual work from any registry but ICANN, and ICANN's
Whois is by far the least interesting name registry on the Internet
for at least some purposes.  (For instance, whatever the paranoia, no
real phishing scam is going to spend a quarter million dollars to get
their domain in the root.)  John Levine has already pointed this out:
if ditching Whois were so important to the people who are saying they
_plan_ to do work, they'd be doing work already.  In the absence of
such work, there's no reason to suppose that the Whois issue is
anything more than a nice to have, and in the DNS registry business
"nice to have" never gets built.  That's the source of resistance.

I want to emphasise that I don't have a strong opinion about this.  I
don't care if we put name registries on the charter.  I simply think
that the arguments the sceptics have are strong ones, and ones that
the IESG is going to take seriously.  If we're going to make progress,
I think incrememtalism is the answer.

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:09:09 -0800

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Andrew Sullivan
> Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 9:48 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [weirds] Proposed charters
> 
> that the arguments the sceptics have are strong ones, and ones that the
> IESG is going to take seriously.  If we're going to make progress, I
> think incrememtalism is the answer.

Not only do I agree, but I would try (have tried) to assuage fears of the name proponents by saying the work of the number proponents is already clearly well-developed.  That means a working group chartered to do number work is in a position to complete that initial charter relatively quickly, even keeping extensibility in mind, and could then recharter to do name work and hit the ground running.  The delay the name proponents fear could well be not worthy of concern in the grand scheme of things, and the fairly strong assertion that the two be separated is thus satisfied.

I think it's unfortunate that we're put in a position to marshal the sentiment of resistance on behalf of those ardently opposed to developing the two together, as they are not participating on this list.  I'm sure that indirection isn't helping us here either.  That is, the discussion here doesn't include the people that were very vocal in Taipei, who could perhaps do more justice to their arguments than are those of us who were there.

I wonder how that goes toward measuring consensus...

-MSK

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 14 Feb 2012 20:08:48 -0000

>I think it's unfortunate that we're put in a position to marshal the sentiment of
>resistance on behalf of those ardently opposed to developing the two together, as
>they are not participating on this list.

Yoo hoo. (Waves hand.)

Pete summed up the issues very well, so there's no need to rehash them.

Truly, I think it's just dandy for people who want to work on names to
work on names, so long as they don't expect us to wait while they get
their act together.

R's,
John