Subject: Enough is enough: Intent to file an RFC 3683 against Jefsey Morfin

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 16:33:44 +0200

I have watched the antics of Jefsey Morfin with some amusement (mixed with 
a quite large amount of frustration) over quite a long time.

But all things must come to an end.

I believe that Jefsey Morfin satisfies the criteria of RFC 3683 that he is 
"abusive of the consensus-driven process".

Jefsey Morfin has proved himself incapable of engaging in constructive 
dialogue with the IETF's participants, and has proved to be able to cause 
the consumption of huge amounts of the IETF's goodwill and energy.

The community approved RFC 3683. I believe it's time to use it.

Before I start collecting the tidbits from my archive of his 700+ postings 
to public mailing lists that are required by RFC 3683 to request a 
PR-action from the IESG, I'd like to ask the community:

- Are there ANY examples of messages from Jefsey Morfin that other IETF 
participants consider valuable contributions?

- Are there other people who wish to add their names to the request to the 
IESG for an RFC 3683 PR-action against Jefsey Morfin?

Please send responses to me privately.

                      Harald Alvestrand

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From: John Leslie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 14:37:16 -0400

> the consumption of huge amounts of the IETF's goodwill and energy.

   I don't wish to support Jefsey here: frankly I've given up reading his
posts.

> The community approved RFC 3683. I believe it's time to use it.

   We should be clear on what we're talking about:
] 
] This memo recommends that the IESG also undertake a new type of action,
] termed a PR-action ("posting rights" action).
] 
] A PR-action identifies one or more individuals, citing messages
] posted by those individuals to an IETF mailing list, that appear to
] be abusive of the consensus-driven process.  If approved by the IESG,
] then:
] 
] o  those identified on the PR-action have their posting rights to
]    that IETF mailing list removed; and,
] 
] o  maintainers of any IETF mailing list may, at their discretion,
]    also remove posting rights to that IETF mailing list.
] 
] Once taken, this action remains in force until explicitly nullified
] and SHOULD remain in force for at least one year.
] 
] One year after the PR-action is approved, a new PR-action MAY be
] introduced which restores the posting rights for that individual.
] The IESG SHOULD consider the frequency of nullifying requests when
] evaluating a new PR-action.  If the posting rights are restored the
] individual is responsible for contacting the owners of the mailing
] lists to have them restored.

   Unfortunately, the criteria for a PR action are a bit vague:
] 
] Notably, in a small number of cases, a participant has engaged in
] what amounts to a "denial-of-service" attack to disrupt the
] consensus-driven process.  Typically, these attacks are made by
] repeatedly posting messages that are off-topic, inflammatory, or
] otherwise counter-productive.  In contrast, good faith disagreement
] is a healthy part of the consensus-driven process.

   To me, for example, 10,000 breakin attempts per day is merely a
minor nuisance, not beginning to approach "denial of service". To some
of my customers, one pornographic spam per month is enough to deny
them the enjoyment of email.

   Jefsey (last I checked) is frequently off-topic, occasionally
inflammatory, and usually counter-productive. Does this "amount to a
denial-of-service attack"?

   I could never feel comfortable calling it one. I'm sure there are
folks that consider my posts "frequently off-topic, occasionallly
inflammatory, and usually counter-productive".

   How many of us are confident that nobody ever perceives these faults
in us?

--
John Leslie <[email-masked]>

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 07:58:55 +0200

Just a few brief comments....

> them the enjoyment of email.

In the US legal system, I think they have the concept of "case law"; one 
passes laws that require judgment to be applied by judges, and then the 
practice of that law becomes part of the case history.
Never using a rule is a kind of "case law" too - it's a statement that can 
be read as "none of the infractions we have seen so far warrant actually 
using the rule, so nobody who isn't behaving worse than any current 
offender need fear it".

(I think Napoleonic-code countries are different; in those countries, the 
judge is supposed to give a correct interpretation of the intent of the 
lawgiver, no matter what other judges have thought at other times. In 
practice, I suspect the difference is not that great.....)

> denial-of-service attack"?

At the moment, learning that Jefsey's opinions can be ignored is a part of 
the initiation process for new IETF participants in the fora he frequents. 
I think that's a steep learning curve.

>    How many of us are confident that nobody ever perceives these faults

Very few of us should be.

And Jefsey is not the worst such participant the IETF has ever endured.
He just happens to be (IMHO) the CURRENTLY worst participant in that regard.

Anyway, I have a few people who are willing to help me come up with a 
reasonable text for the petition. I guess that the result will pop up on 
this list some time after the Last Call for the LTRU documents is over.

Until then.....

                       Harald

---

From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:34:29 +0200

Dear Brian and all,
This mail of Harald Alvestrand positively concludes a long, difficult 
and boring effort of mine started at the WG-IDNA. I apologise to all 
for the inconveniences it created all over these years. My Franglish 
and my lack of talents left me with a tested method: the style you 
suffered, to pass ideas to who is interested or concerned; home work 
to demonstrate and implement them. It avoids conflicts and obtains 
results, at the cost of some ad-hominems instead of major conflicts 
(like on the spam issue). The Draft has considerably improved since I 
started partly opposing it in December.

Harald Alvestrand expressed several times that the IETF is neither 
interested nor competent in multilingualism, an area which is 
necessarily, by its complexity, the size of its financial figures and 
the involved industrial, political and cultural interests, the engine 
of the development of the future Internet (RFC 3869 unfortunately did 
not considered). So, he managed or sponsored himself that policy with 
real talent. I was first confronted to that IETF situation through 
the WG-IDNA: it shown me the rightness of his evaluation.

There was two options: (a) an educational effort and an appropriate 
documentation of the Internet standard process in that area, (b) a 
more appropriate structure to carry and pay for that effort. I choose 
(a) and Harald choose (b). A conflict was unavoidable and I 
documented it long ago in quasi exact terms. But I had to prove it 
and expose it, so we could all together build on it. It was not an 
easy task. It is now done.

Who manages a root registry, manages all what this registry and its 
related registries register (a good example is ICANN). There is an 
on-going major R&D effort to mesh registries (ISO 11179) where the 
IETF should be the leader for network aspects. This confront us to 
the question the WG-ltru Draft actually rises. Does the IAB/IETF want:

- to give the _exclusive_ control of the Multilingual Internet to 
[email-masked], through the IANA langtags core registry?
- to consider multilingualism as an important issue and address it by 
their own, for example through a dedicated area or a specialised WG, 
with all the delays and balkanisation risks this would imply in the 
meanwhile (cf. the IDN experience)?
- to build on existing experiences (Draft, URI-tags as an initial 
vehicle?), to protect innovation and avoid the conflicts either 
propositions above will rise?

The attitude of exclusion of Harald (even calling on Napoleon and 
timely delaying action) and the funny comment of Peter Constable, 
only translate the ( _correct_  in their (de)centralised perspective) 
technical need of an exclusive of the IANA langtags core registry,.

My "negative" contributions permitted this need to be respected: they 
precisely defined (as a QA against my propositions) the area of 
application of the RFC 3066bis Draft through its ABNF. But the second 
and third choices involve the capacity for users communities to 
define their own language and cultural identification systems: this 
means a distributed approach (already accepted for private use).

The real question the IESG is therefore now to respond is: will the 
Internet of the immediate future be only decentalised and under a 
designated, support based, leadership (with which 
operational:financial warranties?), will it increase its risk of 
balkanisation? or should it transition smoothly from a decentralised 
towards a distributed system of references and innovative usage 
architecture, in tune with the rest of the digital convergence?

This is not an easy question.

I thank all those, surprisingly nice and numerous considering the 
issue and my boring mails, who sent me supportive and friendly mails. 
My other positive surprise was that - except on the public lists and 
through anonymous phone calls - I was never attacked. I want to 
specially thank Michael Everson for the work he does - even if it 
happened we had to directly oppose. If I hurt someone it was not intended.

My sadness is the very very small number of non-English mother tongue 
participants: the alternative SDO Harald found is no really better in 
that area. When addressing multilingualism, this should be very 
concerning for us all.

I hope this closes my contributions on the Draft issue.
I support the Draft if it includes the support of URI-tags through 
the "0-" singleton.
I would otherwise initiate or support appeals to the IETF and IAB.
jfc