Subject: [hrpc] Comments on draft-political

From: Shivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2018 13:05:55 +0000

Hi all, some comments on
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-tenoever-hrpc-political-04

Abstract
The draft argues that standards have political impact. While an examination
of other opinions on this point is useful (section 3), it does not per se
bolster the original argument. The abstract seems to suggest that mapping
out differing perspectives is *helpful* in and of itself for making the
case that standards are political ("we come to this conclusion by
mapping..."). If a goal of this document is to do this perspective
delineation then it should be clearly stated.

Introduction
The line with the multiple references doesn't read too well - there seem to
be some missing *and* some surplus commas.
The stating of draft goals is done better in the last sentence of the
introduction.

Vocabulary
Which definition of politics are we using? If we go with "exercising
governance over people" then section 6 makes no sense, for example. It is
critical that we define what it means for something to be political and
then refine that to further define what it means for a *protocol* to be
political. Without this the draft is severely impaired. Maybe this explicit
elucidation could happen else where in the draft (because it's such a
crucial point) and not in the terminology section but then this section
should at least refer to that.

Maybe it would also be helpful to define "standards" (IETF RFCs? Drafts?
Both? Standards in general?)

Literature and Positions
The first line doesn't read too well ("different positions can be
differentiated"). Also not sure what is meant by "external consistency".
Consistency between positions? But that is examined, right? ("This is
different from the claim that..."). I feel like a critical and comparative
analysis of the positions in this section could greatly enhance both the
document's argument and its usefulness as a whole.

Given that this section is examining literature, sections 3.2 and 3.3
should have more references.

All protocols are political some of the times - 3.3
This section seems to be arguing that because the Internet is chaotic and
complicated, protocols will have unintended consequences. But I'm not sure
this necessarily implies that all protocols are *political*. If anything I
think this reasoning is an argument for the next section.

3.4
"Incremental deployablity" -> "incrementally deployable"?

"Much *the* same way"

"Constraints"

"Not to leak" -> "to not leak"

Section 5
Not sure why we're talking about standards. I don't think we need to
discuss the process of standardization itself too much in order to make the
points we're trying to make - a short intro would suffice. Not sure how the
section heading is appropriate.
Also if another goal of this draft is to examine standardization to the
extent we're currently doing then we should again explicitly mention that
in the abstract and introduction.

Section 6
"Clean slate protocols are less likely to be political than protocols that
have to deal with legacy stuff" is what I take out of this. It's an
interesting point but without an explanation for what makes a protocol
political this point is not clear. Also shouldn't the Roman engineers
anecdote have a reference.

Section 7
Layers? As in networking stack layers? Huh?

Section 8
Not sure how this section builds up any argument. Maybe it should be in the
section for standards, as a sub point instead of a whole section by itself.

Section 9
This is an important section but it could do with a better heading.
Basically this is talking about why standardization process should care
about politics.

Section 10
"Instead of splitting hairs" but I thought the whole point was to do that
in order to drive forth the argument that protocols are political and hence
the process of standardization of protocols should consider that.

On the whole, I think this is an important document that could benefit from
further refinement; it would do well as a research group document once it's
cleaned up. The goals of the document are coincident with the goals of our
research group.