Jon Postel Re: 202210301538.AYC

Mon Oct 31 13:27:33 UTC 2022

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