Subject: Re: axfr-clarify on the move again

From: "D. J. Bernstein" <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Nov 2002 19:02:30 -0000

Reckhard, Tobias writes:
> The latter page says, "This Internet-Draft was not published as an RFC."

Right. The BIND company is trying to get this ``clarification''
published as a ``Proposed Standard'' RFC.

These decisions are supposed to be made by working-group consensus, then
reviewed by the IESG. The DNSEXT chairs have sent this document to the
IESG, claiming that the document has DNSEXT consensus.

In fact, at the last DNSEXT meeting, the working group decided _against_
publishing this document. (``Too BIND-specific,'' the minutes say.) The
only discussions since then have been secret discussions between the
BIND company and the DNSEXT chairs. (The chairs let slip on 2002.08.19
that they were acting on the basis of behind-the-scenes discussions.)

In legitimate standards organizations, there's no way for anyone to
misrepresent the will of the group. All actions are confirmed by votes.
In contrast, in the IETF, chairs have tremendous power to promote their
favorite documents. They can declare ``consensus'' whenever they want.
A tremendous burden is then placed on people who object, even if those
people are the majority of the working group!

The history in http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/axfr-clarify.html shows that the
DNSEXT chairs unilaterally pushed this document forward on 2001.03.13,
2001.04.04, 2001.06.22, and now 2002.11.13. People who object to the
document have had to speak up again and again and again.

---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 19:42:53 +0000 (GMT)

On 19 Nov 2002, D. J. Bernstein wrote:

> misrepresent the will of the group.

Really?

I suspect you lack experience of legitimate standards organizations
like the ITU-T.

I'd provide a concrete example, but the ietf mail archives have this
quaint concept of 'current' urls, and are not easily searchable -
google just brings up current stuff that has since changed.

L.

where's the full raw text of wg list mails to grep through when you
need it?

> All actions are confirmed by votes.
> -
> This message was passed through [email-masked], which
> is a sublist of [email-masked]. Not all messages are passed.
> Decisions on what to pass are made solely by Raffaele D'Albenzio.
>

<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/><[email-masked]>

---

From: "D. J. Bernstein" <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Nov 2002 08:49:16 -0000

Daniel Senie writes:
> Working group sessions are places to accelerate discussion and try to
> reach consensus on ideas which should then be brought back to the
> mailing list to ensure the wider audience has the opportunity to
> participate. [RFC 2418, Section 3.2]

Are you suggesting that the broader WG, in mailing-list discussions,
overturned the consensus achieved at the meeting? When, pray tell, did
that happen? Here's the timeline:

   * July: Consensus against axfr-clarify---``too BIND-specific.''
   * August: One message from Randy Bush.
   * November: The DNSEXT chairs declare consensus for axfr-clarify.

As far as I can see, that's it. There were no other public discussions.
The DNSEXT chairs' declaration of consensus was fraudulent.

P.S. Randy Bush has been discarding my messages to namedroppers again.
See http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/namedroppers.html for previous incidents.
It's outrageous that standardization activities are being carried out on
a censored mailing list.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 06:34:10 -0800

> P.S. Randy Bush has been discarding my messages to namedroppers again.

false.  namedroppers allows posts from subscribers.  [email-masked] is
not one.  when messages from non-subscribers arrive for approval,
then, if i see them, i approve them.  but, as the warning i put on
says

[ post by non-subscriber.  with the massive amount of spam, it is easy to
  miss and therefore delete mis-posts.  so fix subscription addresses! ]

randy

---

From: "D. J. Bernstein" <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Nov 2002 20:21:22 -0000

Randy Bush writes:
> it is easy to miss and therefore delete mis-posts

Funny how this happens so often for people you disagree with. Several
incidents are documented in http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/namedroppers.html.

You have been repeatedly informed that there are newsgroup readers,
sublist readers, readers with private subscription addresses, etc.---
but you don't fix your software, you don't turn the list over to someone
competent, and you don't even take responsibility for your mistakes.