[At-Large] [ALAC-Internal] RES: Notice of Opening for Board Liaison Nominations Period

[JFC Morfin]

At 12:47 06/06/2008, Thomas Roessler wrote:
>On 2008-06-06 06:41:34 -0400, Jacqueline A. Morris wrote:
> > Not that JFC was self-nominating Sebastien, which of course is
> > ridiculous.
>
>It would explain a lot, though.
>(sorry, Sebastien, couldn't resist)
>--
>Thomas Roessler   <roessler at does-not-exist.org>

Dear Thomas and all,
This joke should help all of you understand how ALAC management may 
be perceived by new and candid new commers. france at large is certainly 
the most advanced, concerned and involved lose net of @large people. 
They do not focus on ICANN they consider as a set of cons and pros. 
They focus on their own personal interests which is networked with 
the interests of others. In life, business, culture, language, etc. 
etc. including the Internet.

They also are an advanced group of people in terms of grassroots 
evolution of the Internet and probably one of the few ALS having an 
Internet usage architectural alternative under way, liaising with the 
IETF, and active at the IGF level (local, european and worldwide). 
This is why I personnally pushed them to welcome ICANN and enter ALAC.

Their reasoning is simple :

1. ALAC does not want us. Why to bother about them. We are on a 
technical trend to societally by-pass them.

I agree with them, but, they do not necessarily evaluate correctly 
the anglosaxon legacy we also have to support, the same as the 
anglo-saxon world does not evaluate what is needed and developping in 
the rest of the world. Making this understood by both sides is difficult.

2. This made I could not be a candidate to Euralo, and we cannot vote 
in Paris. They know they are legitimate and that all this would be 
administratively settled had I called upon the Ombudsman or/and the 
BoD, instead of trusting Wolf and waiting to see him in Paris.

Wolf did not help in disregrading our invitation to the diner we 
planned at Saff suggestion. They infered there would have a closed 
BoF. To calm this, I nominated Sebastien as the only ALAC person 
knowing the issues we are dealing with (I underlined I could not do it).

4. the very unfortunate comment of Staff on "self-nomination" came on 
top of all this. It shows they equal Sebastien's positions with ours. 
Everyone know we a very friendly with ISOC but very different too. 
Your comment adds to it :-) ! They deduce the feud is by "merchant 
concepts" (as per the IAB RFC 3869) - they daily suffer from in their 
france at large endeavours, and against the "Internet French/WSIS/people 
centric concepts".

For everyone to better undestand, I quote IAB (two years ago):  "The 
principal thesis of this document [RFC 3869] is that if commercial 
funding is the main source of funding for future Internet research, 
the future of the Internet infrastructure could be in trouble.  In 
addition to issues about which projects are funded, the funding 
source can also affect the content of the research, for example, 
towards or against the development of open standards, or taking 
varying degrees of care about the effect of the developed protocols 
on the other traffic on the Internet."

The solution proposed by IAB are: non-commercial R&D funding by 
Governements (US mainly) or @large. The USG has not followed and said 
US industry should be the funding source. Some IETF geeks then 
switched to Google or Yahoo! france at large wen excluded but 
sucessfully opposed (at IETF, ISO, SMSI) some of their most 
contentious positions. A few days ago, france at large has closed a 
mutual de facto understanding with the IETF/WG-IDNABIS over 
IDNA/ML-DNS. In our mind, it should help a smooth transition from a 
cahotic and born dead Internationalised Internet to a stable 
Multilngual Internet, and permit the emergence of the Semantic Internet.

You may understand why they are upset and now laughing at the 
ALAC/Staff's attitude. The question I constantly have is "what did 
they produced, whet did they help?.

For ten years I tell ICANN "let get real". Then Esther Dyson said the 
same. Many will say the same in coming months and two years (JPA and 
IGF understanding of ICANN). There is a place for ICANN in the world 
digital and semantic ecosystem supported by the Internet. This role 
can only be introduced and made credible to users by ALAC, as the 
ICANN own's users. Otherwise there will be a split, the USG/ICANN 
dreaming of a new world shape and the world building itself 
differently ...until there is a US/World interoperability clash.

The Internet is an interconnected computer assisted people's network, 
the IETF only wants to influence the design, use and management for 
it to work better along its own values [RFC 3935]. This means it 
really is what the people think how it is built. ICANN is a 
regulating organisationware tool for these computers. People can keep 
using it, people can feel it is a bug. People will decide from what 
they gather from @larges, as their nearest technical/legal pole of 
responsible and authoritative competence.

jfc