Jon Postel Re: 202210301538.AYC

Fri Nov 4 16:15:56 UTC 2022

On 11/2/22 8:33 AM, Abraham Y. Chen wrote:

> 0) "Internet Vendor Task Force indeed.":  Thank you so much in distilling this thread one more step for getting even closer to its essence.
> 

As I'd mentioned already, Randy Bush has also had some cogent thoughts
over the years.  That's where I'd first heard this phrasing long ago.
Credit where credit is due.

I've been involved since 1979.  Hostility to an ITU-style organization
arises from the earliest days of the NSFnet (which was government
funded), in part because ATT was using the existing standards bodies to
prevent the academic Internet itself from going forward.

There's a lot of history.

There are many different models for standards organization governance.
I've been the head of standards for Red Hat for a few years (until it
was bought by IBM), navigating roughly 50 different organizations.

Back in the day, my early involvement was funded by government grants,
government oversight committees, and political campaigns.  (Particularly,
my PPP work was originally funded by Bob Carr for Congress and Carl Levin
for Senate, via Practical Political Consulting.)

And for nearly half my life, I've been spending my time with a now former
Member of Congress.  So I've seen folks who know politics well....

All human effort is inherently political.  Our problem is, engineers are
particularly poor at politics.