Jon Postel Re: 202210301538.AYC

Thu Nov 3 00:48:28 UTC 2022

On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 12:03 PM Vasilenko Eduard
<vasilenko.eduard at huawei.com> wrote:
>
> It is believed by many that 2 terms should be the maximum for one position of any chair (if it is a democracy).

The length of time in office and the amount of power in the office
are, in my opinion, much, Much more important than the mere number of
terms. I think that Elizabeth the II being Queen of England for 70
years was not much of a problem -- and it wasn't because she served
only 1 term of office. It was because the British monarchy has
essentially no executive authority.

IETF Area Directors are selected for 2 year terms (or less if they are
filling out the remainder of a term when someone has left office) not
because 2 years is thought to be a reasonable length of time in
office. I was around when the IETF NomCom system was being set up and
the term was limited to 2 years as a balance between short terms to
limit the damage a bad Area Director could do and long terms to
decrease the amount of work for the NomCom. (In the early years of the
NomCom, I believe there were a small number of cases of a 3 year term
but only for an AD who had already successfully served for 2 years.)

Although this isn't a written guideline, many people believe that the
first 2 years in an Area Director position are sort of a probationary
period and as long as the AD does adequately, they should normally be
continued for a 2nd term, if they want it. Being continued for a 3rd
or later term should only be for superior performance and in the
absence of an apparently stronger alternative. Note the following
   -- Having served in one capacity or another on six Nomcoms over the
30 year history of the Nomcom system and I can assure you that there
are always at least 1 or 2 positions for which the Nomcom, after the
normal nomination period, has only zero or one possibilities to choose
between and it is common for NomCom to have to engage in substantial
recruiting (aka "arm twisting") to get more nominees from which to
choose. I just checked the NomCom pages and right now there are three
positions where, for the 2022-2024 term, the current NomCom has only
one person who has been nominated and agreed to run. So it isn't like
they have a vast pool of willing people to choose between.
   -- Most former Area Directors say that there is a substantial
learning curve and it takes about a year before you are fully
effective as an Area Director. So, if ADs were limited to 1 term of 2
years, the IESG would only be 50 to 75% effective. With 2 terms of 2
years, it is more like 75 to 88% effective.

Furthermore, most Areas of the IETF have two co-ADs who tend to
moderate each other and many decisions are made by the IESG, which
consists of all the ADs, which is a further moderating effect.

> It is evidently not the case for IETF - people stay in power for decades. It is just a fact that is not possible to dispute.
> Yes, Nomcom is the mechanism for AD and above. I do not want to sort out how exactly it is performed.

Well, the NomCom system is well documented in a number of RFCs.

The most powerful single position in the IETF is the IETF Chair. As
you can see from the attached image only one person has served as IETF
Chair for as long as 8 years but as soon as the nomcom system was
started, they were replaced. After that, only one other person served
as long as 6 years, which was Russ Housley who I think was a
particularly good IETF Chair. All others have been limited to 2 or 4
years (1 or 2 terms). It would take a lot more work to do a similar
analysis for AD positions but I believe you would find that the length
of time in office for ADs was longer in the early days of the IETF and
is now rarely over 6 years.

In an earlier message, you said something about people retaining
positions due to networking with other people. Well, I would say that
is characteristic of all human organizations (unless you go with
strict Sortition). See my RFC 4144 "How to Gain Prominence and
Influence in Standards Organizations".

> By the way, WG chairs have been put aside from any election mechanisms.

Yes, there are people who have served as co-Chair of an IETF Working
Group for long periods of time and there is currently no specific term
of office for a WG Chair. But these days most IETF WGs have two
co-Chairs, which has a moderating influence. Furthermore, Area
Directors are where the real power is. The AD for a WG has the power
to remove or appoint Chairs anytime so you have a very clear appeal
path if you believe a WG Chair has acted improperly and failed, in
your opinion, to rectify their error when you call their attention to
it.

> If any politician would manage to possess power for more than 2 terms - he would be immediately called "totalitarian".

I would agree that if a position has substantial executive power and
someone fills the position for a long enough time (perhaps in the
range of 8 to 10 years) then there is an effect where it gets harder
and harder to imagine someone else in the position, etc.  But I
wouldn't necessarily call it "totalitarian" and the length of time is
much more important than the number of terms. If someone is elected
Speaker of the US House of Representatives for 3 successive
Congresses, thus serving for 6 years (3 terms) in that office, they
will have substantial clout because of this but they can't rule the
House like a dictator against the wishes of a majority of the
representatives of their party who can vote them out of the Speaker's
office and elect someone else whenever they want. The fact that it is
possible for a Speaker to be so elected for 6 or more years and that
this has happened does not make the US House of Representatives a
"totalitarian" organization and I would not call it that.

Thanks,
Donald

> Even if he would say that there is a mechanism for it.
> Eduard
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Donald Eastlake [mailto:d3e3e3 at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, October 31, 2022 4:28 PM
> To: Vasilenko Eduard <vasilenko.eduard at huawei.com>; North American Network Operators' Group <nanog at nanog.org>
> Subject: Re: Jon Postel Re: 202210301538.AYC
>
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 2:37 AM Vasilenko Eduard via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> I do not see how it can be called totalitarian given the IETF Nomcom appointment and recall mechanisms. Admittedly it is not full on Sortition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition) but it is just one level of indirection from Sortition. (See
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/08/20/indirection-the-unsung-hero-of-software-engineering/?sh=2cc673587f47)
>
> Thanks,
> Donald
>
> >  ...
> >
> > Eduard