Subject: [Ltru] Re: ISO 3166 alpha-2 (was ISO 3166-2...)

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 13:55:25 -0800

r&d afrac <rd at afrac dot org> wrote:

>> The consensus of the WG has been that ccTLDs are one use of ISO
>> 3166-1 alpha-2 code elements, and language tags are another, and
>> that is the only relationship between the two.
>
> I do not want to harp on this answer by the author of the proposed
> IANA language registry. I know you are a Unicode, W3C, ISO expert.
> But this is the IETF. This triggers the RFC 3935 principle of
> competence. This is a serious cause for appeal of your proposed
> registry.

First, I am not an author.  I am an editor.  The difference, as I 
understand it, is that the present document consists entirely of group 
consensus material, approved by the group before it makes its way into 
the document.  This is not a matter of me writing the words and the 
group subsequently approving them.  This is an important distinction, 
since the ownership of and responsibility for the content belongs to the 
group, not just me.

My job as editor of this document, again as I understand it, is as 
follows:

1.  To ensure that the initial registry (Section 3) is correct and 
complete, according to its own rules and based on the current contents 
of the core standards.

2.  To ensure that the accompanying text (Section 2) accurately reflects 
the process by which the initial registry contents were derived.

3.  To ensure that the entire document reflects rough group consensus.

The job of editing this particular document is one of a record-keeper, 
not a lingusitic or network expert.

Of course, since I have now been charged with incompetence, and an 
appeal has been threatened against draft-initial on that basis, what I 
say must be taken at face value.  Certainly this charge must be taken 
seriously from a contributor who has never written, co-written, edited, 
or co-edited an RFC.

>>> Question: is the "only the larger island" meant to exclude the Isles
>>> of Wight, the Hebridies, the Orkneys, the Shetlands, Rockall, etc.
>>> and the claim they may still have on Corsica?
>>
>> Don't ask me.  I'm not the one who keeps insisting that GB stands
>> for something other than the entire United Kingdom.
>
> This also trigger the RFC 3935 principle of competence and of
> responsibility for your registry proposition.
> - you published a Draft registry where you releate territories and
> languages.

Draft-registry (the document edited by Addison and Mark) defines region 
subtags as a way "to indicate linguistic variations associated with or 
appropriate to a specific country, territory, or region," and says that 
the set of valid region subtags is drawn from a registry.

Draft-initial (the document currently edited by me) presents the initial 
contents of the registry, and explains how those initial contents were 
determined.  It says nothing about how region subtags should be used.

> - you comment one entry (GB) seeming to exclude the reference to a
> larger territory than many other territories in the registry

For the LAST TIME, the region subtag GB in the initial registry 
represents "United Kingdom."  It does not represent a portion or 
subdivision thereof.  This would be equally true regardless of whether 
the actual letters were GB, UK, or ZQ.

-----
Type: region
Subtag: GB
Description: United Kingdom
Added: 2005-10-16
-----

Is this still unclear in some way?  What can I do to make it more clear?

> - when asked about it you answer "Don't ask me". Who else should I
> ask?

You should ask the person who is continuing to claim that GB does not 
represent "United Kingdom" because it consists of the letters G and B.

> We cannot expect from you as an author to be an expert in every
> international issue at hand. But we can expect you have a methodology
> to address them.

You should not expect anything from me as an author, because I am not 
one.

As an EDITOR, I should be expected to follow the methodology agreed upon 
by the group, which is to use ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code elements (dating 
back to the publication date of RFC 1766) as region subtags, and not to 
invent our own region subtags.

> You are the author of RFC 3066 bis comburent document,

"Comburent"?  It supports combustion?  What does this mean?

In any case, I am an editor, not an author.  At least for now.

> I suppose you want to see applied and used?

Well, of course if I am contributing to a document, I don't want to see 
to go directly into the dustbin.

> Authors of the RFC 3066 bis have documented enough they add
> constraints to RFC 3066 to ensure its better use. This use depends on
> experts you currently embodies as the registry authors the point
> above permits me to qualify as unprecise.

I genuinely do not understand that last sentence, and would appreciate 
if someone would explain to me what it means.

> I do not think RFC 3066 bis is nefarious (your term) but uncomplete.
> Imposing a proprietary naming system to language products, solutions
> etc. It will also lead to unprecise and contradictory filtering.

"Proprietary" in English means that a party exercises exclusive private 
ownership over something.  RFC 3066bis is based on publicly available 
ISO and UN standards, augmented by variant subtags established by a 
publicly accessible, IETF-affiliated group, and private-use tags defined 
by end users.  Standards that are not freely available, such as ISO 
3166-2, were expressly excluded.  The mechanism itself is intended for 
publication in a freely available document, and the drafts have always 
been freely available.  Other than the IETF and Internet Society 
boilerplate, there are no copyright notices, patents, trademark 
restrictions, or other IP restrictions.  Where is the private ownership?

> The question is simple: who is most authoritative over what people
> do. The experts who feed their computers or the people themselves?
> This is like parents for their kids. At the begining the experts are.
> Then technology and the people's expertise develops and becomes more
> pertinent. There is a need for a transition.
>
> Transitions are costly and mean (power, control, market, recognition,
> etc.) domain losses. So, some experts want to stay in the lead
> instead of transfering. They progressively lose (RFC 3935) competence
> and responsibility capacity. This is why I think it is upto
> responsible engineers to organise the new technical context for
> experts to assist people, instead of shepherding them.

Well, I guess everyone should just make up their own language tags as 
they go.  That will surely eliminate the problem of "unprecise and 
contradictory filtering."

> These reluctant experts may be unaware or nostalgic, I do not judge
> them. They may confuse some merchants for a while (commercial
> interest is _never_ to oppose the market). But they are on the wrong
> track, and the work they do (which unfortunately might be precious)
> might be lost. We saw that all the time, in all the technologies.
> "the customer/user is king" is not a commercial trick, but a long
> time experience.

I have said repeatedly, and will say again FOR THE LAST TIME, that I 
have NO commercial stake in this project.  My company neither supports 
nor opposes this project.  I have been involved in it for reasons of 
personal choice only.

I joined this project back in March 2004, during its preliminary stage 
on ietf-languages, because I wanted to help coordinate the registry 
under discussion.  I thought it would help.  Obviously if draft-initial 
is now going to be appealed on the basis of my supposed incompetence, 
then my contribution is not helping.  We have already seen the progress 
of draft-registry stalled indefinitely by one appeal.  There should be 
no doubt that this contributor will follow through on his threat to file 
another appeal -- anything to prevent the LTRU documents from moving 
forward.

This has been a very difficult project for me personally, all because of 
one person.  I did not get involved so that I could be accused of 
trampling on the needs and desires of users, or giving big powerful 
corporations hegemony over the Internet, or making "Govs" angry, or 
violating human rights, or causing people to "suffer and die" (an actual 
quote).  I deeply resent having been accused of these things continually 
over the past year.  I was under the impression that RFC 3934 and RFC 
3683 existed so that WG business could be conducted on mailing lists 
just as it would be face-to-face, in an orderly manner, with reasonable 
dissent but without being beaten over the head by a lone angry 
protester.  As it turns out, either the process does not work or there 
is little or no desire to make it work in this case.  I have been told 
to sit quietly and take it, and admonished for responding; in short, I 
am getting no support on this.

On top of this, my involvement is now poised to trigger an appeal on 
grounds of incompetence.  This is both detrimental to the project and 
personally embarrassing.

I don't know if there is any process or precedent for transferring the 
editorship of a document already in IESG Last Call, but I am now asking 
Randy and Martin to investigate this for draft-ietf-ltru-initial.  I 
mentioned this possible course of action in private e-mails yesterday 
and have received no response at all, which perhaps is telling in its 
own way.

I request a timely response from the co-chairs, and from the AD if 
appropriate.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California, USA
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/

_______________________________________________
Ltru mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru

---

From: Ned Freed <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 16:42:21 -0800 (PST)

> nor opposes this project.  I have been involved in it for reasons of

FWIW, this parallels my own, much more limited, involvement in this group. I
have tracked this effort because I felt that there were some issues surrounding
the handling of language tags that needed to be addressed in the original
3066bis document. I'm pleased to say that I believe these issues have all been
dealt with in the current round of drafts.

My employer, Sun Microsystems, has never expressed the slightest degree of
interest in telling me to present a particular position on any of this. My
past objections were solely my own, as is my current support.

> then my contribution is not helping.

Doug, I doubt very much that you being the editor is a significant factor here.

> We have already seen the progress

I'm afraid I have to agree with this assessment. I further note that there have
only ever been 10 IESG appeals, and 3 of them have yet to be resolved. I don't
believe there has ever been a time when there were 3 open at once, and this may
result in the appeals taking longer than usual.

> over the past year.

Doug, while I have not been on the receiving end of any of this specifically,
goodness knows I have been on the receiving end of various attacks as a result
of my work in the IETF. I think I can therefore say that I understand where
you're coming from.

> I was under the impression that RFC 3934 and RFC
> protester.

Guess you haven't attended an IETF in person, then ;-) Shouting matches aren't
exactly unknown. I can even recall one occasion where I thought a physical
attack was imminent.

I wish I could say that this sort of thing was unique to the IETF, but i've
been involved in other standards processes and they can get rough as well.

Some of this is necessary - the crucible of informed debate may not be a
comfortable place to be - but experience has shown that having it does
significantly improve the resulting specifications.

But there is a limit past which things devolve into personal attacks, delaying
tactics, and other sorts of pernicious nonsense. IMO we reached, and passed,
that point some time back.

> As it turns out, either the process does not work or there

Well, I for one support you in this. I think Harald at a minimum does too,
although I hasten to add that I don't speak for him.

> grounds of incompetence.  This is both detrimental to the project and

Again, my reading is that this is hardly contingent on your involvement
specifically.

> I request a timely response from the co-chairs, and from the AD if

Doug, I am sorry it has come to this and I for one will in my small way support
any choice you elect to make.

I feel it is worth pointing out that this is the serious downside to all this
"free speech at any cost" stuff: It tends to drive good and valuable people -
and IMO you are a valuable contributor - away. This can be hugely damaging, and
I urge the powers-that-be to take note.

				Ned

---

From: r&d afrac <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 02:24:11 +0100

Dear Doug,
I read carefully your mail. I will spend time to carefully and 
friendly respond to it (I never took seriously the PR-action you signed).

I am sincerely sorry you take as a private issue what results from 
your genuine adherence to an uncomplete (and this way harmful) 
project. I wish you calm yourself and consider what is the real 
debate. Also, may be will you want to reread RFC 3935: the principles 
of competence and of responsibility are NOT aimed at participants, 
but at the IETF. You are not in any case concerned.

But the comments you introduce and your capacity to support them are 
important. So is your last comment: it seems to document what I think 
is the problem: the inadequation of the IETF to take the world 
leadership in language identification.

I do not want to dispute your author/editor role: for the IETF you 
are the author, but I understand you prefer being called editor. In 
any case you are our current authority about the RFC 3066 bis 
associated registry. Until RFC 3066 bis is enacted (decision 
unfortunately is not mine) you are in fact replacing for us the 
[email-masked] mailing list center of expertise. They 
registered a few scores of langtags in 10 years. You register 
thousands of them.

We discuss here filtering and we are heading towards a WG LC. We want 
to document what happens when a user has a problem with a langtag 
which does not match the langtags he can deal with. His problem may result:

1. from his lack of knowledge of the proposed language (this is the 
case considered by the draft)
2. from a concept error in the RFC 3066 bis - I consider there is a 
major one: its rigidity and limitations can be the main cause of 
problems (except may be in one exclusive case).
3. from the used registry - I consider there is a major problem which 
is its limitations and the procedure to add subtags (I can copy you 
our current equivalent draft csv).
4. from a metastructural issue not covered by the RFC 3066 bis: a 
predetermined non US-ASCII default due to a lingual TLD.

We have a request by a participant for a subtag (UK) to be introduced 
as a synonym for GB. This requests mares the debate for years. It 
also happens that the way it is proposed may also help investigate 
the case nr. 4. It is therefore a simple, known to all, school case 
to test the proposed RFC 3066 bis/Registry system precisely designed 
to accommodate subtag registration.

This being said, I review your points when I think it helps the 
filtering debate or is fair to you.

At 22:55 07/11/2005, Doug Ewell wrote:
>understand it, is that the present document consists entirely of 
>group consensus material, approved by the group before it makes its 
>way into the document.  This is not a matter of me writing the words 
>and the group subsequently approving them.  This is an important 
>distinction, since the ownership of and responsibility for the 
>content belongs to the group, not just me.
>
>My job as editor of this document, again as I understand it, is as follows:
>
>complete, according to its own rules and based on the current 
>contents of the core standards.
>
>2.  To ensure that the accompanying text (Section 2) accurately 
>reflects the process by which the initial registry contents were derived.
>
>The job of editing this particular document is one of a 
>record-keeper, not a lingusitic or network expert.
>
>appeal has been threatened against draft-initial on that basis, what 
>I say must be taken at face value.  Certainly this charge must be 
>taken seriously from a contributor who has never written, 
>co-written, edited, or co-edited an RFC.

As you perfectly described it, the WG Ltru has chosen you, supported 
you, told you what to do, in an domain which is not yours. You 
carried the job very well (you may recall you are the only one I 
congratulated for a job well done). But all this demonstrates the 
IETF has NOT the capacity to carry the job as a world leading expert 
center and to take over the responsibility of a registry where these 
issues are to be discussed and decided. We have no ISO 3166 MA group 
member (ICANN is one), who would have appropriately addressed the 
issue you enlighten or which were risen.

Harald just documented that this was not the job of ietf-languages to 
discuss the addition of UK as a subtag in the langtag registry. There 
is therefore not even a claim to carry what the RFC 3066 bis meant to.

So, you have not been charged with incompetence. But do you pretend 
to be a world expert of reference in the ISO 3166 area? It happens 
that there are some. Acknowledged by ISO.

>Draft-registry (the document edited by Addison and Mark) defines 
>region subtags as a way "to indicate linguistic variations 
>associated with or appropriate to a specific country, territory, or 
>region," and says that the set of valid region subtags is drawn from 
>a registry.
>
>Draft-initial (the document currently edited by me) presents the 
>initial contents of the registry, and explains how those initial 
>contents were determined.  It says nothing about how region subtags 
>should be used.

The  question at hand is only to understandhow you yourself  (as the 
editor of the Registry) understand one of the entries. Because you 
prompted a new definition.

>subdivision thereof.  This would be equally true regardless of 
>whether the actual letters were GB, UK, or ZQ.

I have no problem with that. I only rose the question because _you_ 
said otherwise.

>>- when asked about it you answer "Don't ask me". Who else should I ask?
>
>You should ask the person who is continuing to claim that GB does 
>not represent "United Kingdom" because it consists of the letters G and B.

Here we are in full agreement. .... This represent the largest part 
of the crowd supposed to use GB.

>You should not expect anything from me as an author, because I am not one.
>
>As an EDITOR, I should be expected to follow the methodology agreed 
>upon by the group, which is to use ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code elements 
>(dating back to the publication date of RFC 1766) as region subtags, 
>and not to invent our own region subtags.

BTW this was documented today as a "decision" of and by the author of 
RFC 1766 and RFC 3066. By nature I oppose unilateral decisions 
without adherence because they do not scale. The Charter documents 
there is no real adherence. The WG-ltru has been set to correct that.

>"Comburent"?  It supports combustion?  What does this mean?

That RFC 3066 bis cannot fly without your registry.

>Well, of course if I am contributing to a document, I don't want to 
>see to go directly into the dustbin.
>
>I genuinely do not understand that last sentence, and would 
>appreciate if someone would explain to me what it means.

Sorry, multilingual environment makes it more complex. RFC 3066 bis 
introduces constraints in addition to RFC 3066. Towards a better use 
of langtags. This uses calls for a registry. You are the "editor" of 
this registry and a member of the mailing list of expert which is to 
keep editing it. I think I am entitled to qualify your positions on 
the Brisith Isles as imprecise.

This is no critic of you. This is a critic on a system which imposes 
on you to be authoritative in areas which are not yours.

>"Proprietary" in English means that a party exercises exclusive 
>private ownership over something.  RFC 3066bis is based on publicly 
>available ISO and UN standards, augmented by variant subtags 
>established by a publicly accessible, IETF-affiliated group, and 
>private-use tags defined by end users.  Standards that are not 
>freely available, such as ISO 3166-2, were expressly excluded.  The 
>mechanism itself is intended for publication in a freely available 
>document, and the drafts have always been freely available.  Other 
>than the IETF and Internet Society boilerplate, there are no 
>copyright notices, patents, trademark restrictions, or other IP 
>restrictions.  Where is the private ownership?

I will answer that because you ask, but this is now at IESG. RFC 3066 
bis ABNF is designed to be consistent with the Unicode CLDR scheme 
and to exclude the other ABNFs by SSDOs, R&D or private users. Please 
read the Charter. Consider who are the authors. Find in the WG Ltru 
archives a response from Mark Davis to my request of information 
concerning the CLDR IPRs.

What is under consideration now, is to understand the real purpose of 
filtering. Is it for an Hungarian person to know if he can understand 
the Polish or the Serbian he does not know, or is it it to know if 
the variations of the Polish locale or of the Serbian locale are most 
adapted to replace missing Hungarian locale elements.

>Well, I guess everyone should just make up their own language tags 
>as they go.  That will surely eliminate the problem of "unprecise 
>and contradictory filtering."

Certainly yes. But it would require more work to developers to 
understand how to do it. We know it: "the problem is the user".
I am here as a user. And the world in many places, including DARPA 
and AFRAC, carry the necessary work.

>have NO commercial stake in this project.  My company neither 
>supports nor opposes this project.  I have been involved in it for 
>reasons of personal choice only.

Doug, the commercial stakes in this are much, much bigger than that. 
You are not concerned. They concern the sales of billions books, 
contents, etc.

>I joined this project back in March 2004, during its preliminary 
>stage on ietf-languages, because I wanted to help coordinate the 
>registry under discussion.  I thought it would help.  Obviously if 
>draft-initial is now going to be appealed on the basis of my 
>supposed incompetence, then my contribution is not helping.  We have 
>already seen the progress of draft-registry stalled indefinitely by 
>one appeal.  There should be no doubt that this contributor will 
>follow through on his threat to file another appeal -- anything to 
>prevent the LTRU documents from moving forward.

Yes. Unfortunately the Internet standard process does not permit to 
prevent societally harming projects to develop or to be corrected 
before they are published. But it offers ways to block their 
application. I know it is poor for those who worked on them. It is 
also poor for me. But this is the way it is.

I have been very loyal all the way through. Documenting what I will 
do and why. And proposing solutions towards a consensus (and making 
many things change to protect users in case it would go though).

Today I propose a structural solution to avoid such a waste of time 
in the future: to revive appropriately the ISTF and the ISSG. I am 
sure that your dedication would have listen to a position of the ISSG 
regarding the Charter. This would have lead you to consider it more 
carefully and to discuss its implications. Had we done that I suppose 
RFC 3066 bis would be published for a long.

But today we are to discuss filtering. Ane we can certainly do it in 
a way which would contribute to network permanent stability.

>This has been a very difficult project for me personally, all 
>because of one person.

Same for me, and all because of one person and his allies. This is 
the reality of the life, welcome to the stanardisation world. But 
this should not prevent us to continue working on the filtering 
issue, which is partly orthogonal to all that.

>I did not get involved so that I could be accused of trampling on 
>the needs and desires of users, or giving big powerful corporations 
>hegemony over the Internet, or ng "Govs" angry, or violatimaking 
>human rights, or causing people to "suffer and die" (an actual 
>quote).  I deeply resent having been accused of these things 
>continually over the past year.

Did you ever consider that I might be right. All the non-WG-ltru 
people I know I informed of the RFC 3066 bis consider it as a 
declaration of war on cultures (what is interesting is that I do not 
need to propose them the idea). Do you think there are so many angry 
lunatics. Did you even tried to understand what the Peace Nobel Price 
I quoted said about physical internal and external conflicts 
resulting from that globalization RFC 1766, 3066 and 3066 bis are the 
conceptual technical basis?

>I was under the impression that RFC 3934 and RFC 3683 existed so 
>that WG business could be conducted on mailing lists just as it 
>would be face-to-face, in an orderly manner, with reasonable dissent 
>but without being beaten over the head by a lone angry protester.

I am not angry. I am sad. I am not alone: I only chose to be alone in 
here. I wanted to avoid the WG to be a battle field leading to no 
where: it would not have exposed the fundamental differences of 
doctrine between Harald, and the Members of its affinity group, and 
me. This was important to appeals within and outside the IETF and to 
the response to their joint industrial endeavour. I am sure that even 
if you are not commercial, not the entire industrial world is a 
member of our non-profit consortium.

>As it turns out, either the process does not work or there is little 
>or no desire to make it work in this case.  I have been told to sit 
>quietly and take it, and admonished for responding; in short, I am 
>getting no support on this.
>
>grounds of incompetence.  This is both detrimental to the project 
>and personally embarrassing.

Think about my own embarassment at being PR-actioned by a _childish_ 
document! If we both want to get good documents at the end of the 
day, on filtering - this is what we should discuss - these kinds of 
things are common in standardisation. We all saw far worse :-) Do you 
realise the amount of money at stake?

>I don't know if there is any process or precedent for transferring 
>the editorship of a document already in IESG Last Call, but I am now 
>asking Randy and Martin to investigate this for 
>draft-ietf-ltru-initial.  I mentioned this possible course of action 
>in private e-mails yesterday and have received no response at all, 
>which perhaps is telling in its own way.
>

Doug, I understand your worry. But an appeal against 
draft-ietf-ltru-initial can only be on the ground that you made an 
outstanding job. If you had done a poor job, IESG could claim the 
problem originated in you, but the concept was good. Here the appeal 
will be on the ground that in spite of having been carried in the 
best way, by the most motivated person, with the best WG-ltru 
support, etc. the WG-ltru debate has shown the IETF has not the 
capacity, nor the intent (cf. Harald Alvestrand's today mail on his 
mailing list) to competently debate and responsibly support along 
with the RFC 3935 standards, the intended RFC 3066 bis documented 
registry without some missing modification, reducing the need of 
competence and responsibility to a level acceptable by the IETF.

jfc

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 17:41:54 -0800

At the moment, I am in the IETF meeting in Vancouver.

I'm told that the IESG still hasn't made a determination on my request that 
they consider an RFC 3934 action against Jefsey, among other things because 
it's not readily apparent to someone reading individual messages out of 
context just how disruptive this individual has been to the process.

>From my personal knowledge of these people, there is a strong desire to 
make the process work, but also a strong desire to treat individuals 
fairly, and a strong tendency - too strong, in my opinion - to err on the 
side of permitting people to express themselves.

Those of you who are in Vancouver might want to give your opinions to IESG 
people you work with on this issue.

                   Harald

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 02:40:31 +0100

Doug Ewell wrote:

> We have already seen the progress of draft-registry stalled
> indefinitely by one appeal.

It's not "stalled indefinitely", and the appeal doesn't pass
any giggle test.  Just another brick in the 368^Wwall.  In
theory Scott could have approved draft-registry, the RfC editor
note is not that important, the authors could as well fix the
simple typo in AUTH48.  With this note there's no chance to
forget this, that's all, a safeguard.

Putting the approval on hold is just another safeguard, because
_in theory_ it would be more work to change it after it's sent
than before.  In practice that's all complete nonsense, we all
know that it's a simple typo.

We also all know that ccTLD vs. 3166-1 was discussed here and
before, incl. but not not limited to UK vs. GB.  So if one
person claims that this was never discussed, then this person
is a liar.  It's also a lie when this person claims that the
typo was an intentional feature.

> I mentioned this possible course of action in private e-mails
> yesterday and have received no response at all

Folks are in Vancouver and busy, the 64th IETF meeting started
yesterday.  Everything's fine with your text, so don't let one
[censored] make you give it away.  You can and should be proud
to be the editor and author of this soon-to-be-RfC,

                            Bye, Frank

http://mid.gmane.org/[email-masked]
http://mid.gmane.org/[email-masked]

---

From: r&d afrac <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 10:08:32 +0100

At 02:41 08/11/2005, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>I'm told that the IESG still hasn't made a determination on my 
>request that they consider an RFC 3934 action against Jefsey, among 
>other things because it's not readily apparent to someone reading 
>individual messages out of context just how disruptive this 
>individual has been to the process.
>
> From my personal knowledge of these people, there is a strong 
> desire to make the process work, but also a strong desire to treat 
> individuals fairly, and a strong tendency - too strong, in my 
> opinion - to err on the side of permitting people to express themselves.
>
>Those of you who are in Vancouver might want to give your opinions 
>to IESG people you work with on this issue.
>
>                   Harald

Dear Harald,
I suppose that everyone serious will read this mail on the WG-ltru 
list at the time we discuss ... filtering:
- as an ad-hominem
- irrelevant to the WG-ltru debate
- an attempt to influence the Judges you called upon.
- as taking advantage from your employer's money (your presence in 
Vancouver) to disloyaly fight your competition.

I am more seriously interested in the doctrine you document, you 
engaged the IETF into and I oppose, as it does affect the WG-ltru debate.

Your doctrine is to reach network stability though constraint. This 
is the widely documented theme of RFC 3066 bis.This culture is 
exemplified here in your rant against "permitting people to express 
themselves". You want to decide for the users the languages they can 
use. Is it because they are the languages your organization (you are 
on the BoD) thinks it can support (Unicode CLDR project directed by 
the author of the RFC 3066 bis)? Is it because you look for a logical 
MoU with the IETF to be delegated the IANA registry confirming the 
[email-masked] mailing list's role (some others also 
look for a IANA control).

I accept that this doctrine is well built and consistent. I am 
impressed by the quality of its leading supporters (Mark Davis [IBM, 
Unicode President, and Director of the CLDR Project], Peter Constable 
[Microsoft, author of ISO 639-3], Addison Philips [W3C 
Internationalisation, but not committing the W3C], etc.)

But I am not impressed by your architectural and technical doctrine, 
because I think constraint does not scale (except in tirany). And 
because it therefore leads to network instability. This doctrine of 
yours has already lead to the IDNA failure and to the balkanisation 
of the DNS. The rigidity of this doctrine will lead to the split 
80/20 of the Internet - it is certainly at the core of the WSIS 
debate and it practically roots in the core of the Internet culture 
(through languages) that "global" is unilateral. What leads many to 
consider it is a "war on cultures". IESG is to decide in a complex 
political context. But you carefully chosed the dates.

I think the "master" in a network is not the computer, and through 
the computer, the "expert" who feeds global data into it, but the 
people. I think the people are entitled to "err to express 
themselves", this is even named "market judgment" and "Liberty". My 
understanding of "global" is multilateral (it happens that we are a 
few billions thinking that way). For some few years since Adam, man 
has shown that "erring" this way permitted him to do a few things.

Constraining languages and cultures, putting pressure on the IESG, 
fighting people's liberty, PR-actioning your open use competition 
with childish accusations (let imagine the IESG confronted to an 
appeal of mine against the pertinence of your text :-)), considering 
the Internet as does a national Communications Code vs. the 
traditional adhesion to the Internet documents, etc. all this 
certainly belongs to a consistent architectural approach. I have no 
objection to that, I even accept it as a possible starting point, a 
default, a necessary begining (like parents take decisions for their 
kids: but now the Internet is grown-up, we are to organize 
transition. This is the proposition I do to save RFC 3066 bis from 
legal debacle and endless appeals and legal actions).

This consistent architectural approach of yours has a name: 
centralised networking. I am sorry, but this is not the distributed 
network culture of an Internet for the people by the people I have 
for 30 years this year. At my age one does not change....

Our difference is that you want to exclude me to exclude my technical 
position, while I am proposing to include yours in mine and mine in yours.

Now, I suggest that you stay on topic for your next WG-ltru posts. I 
listed yesterday the four areas the currently discussed document 
should address as a real IETF document (not as a support of your pet 
project) or comment in security or in societal considerations: it 
only discusses one right now. There is work ahead. I do not think 
your kind of disruption and your personal rants are productive: we 
oppose on a fondamental point. OK, either we live with it, or we try 
to take advantage from it to best document the IETF community.

Your position represents a significant part of current solution 
providers dominance, mine represents the progresses of a significant 
part of their competition, of their service providers challengers and 
of the world R&D, your affinity group rejected through the opposition 
to a declared intent of conformance to ISO 11179. You have decided 
through your PR-action to identify me as your opponent. I am not 
against it as I am interested in IETF deliverables user QA in the 
multilingual/multicultural area. But please use technical arguments 
against my technical arguments: I am sure you have some if you search 
well - this area is still under R&D. Otherwise you will not be taken 
seriously what, IMHO, you certainly do not desserve.

I oppose you, but to the countrary of you, I respect you.

Have a good meeting, enjoy Vancouver.
jfc

---

From: r&d afrac <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 10:36:52 +0100

Dear Chairs,
I must this time ask for a formal warning according to RFC 3934 
against this kind of repeated off topic kind of ad hominems. I am not 
hurt by that mails, but I think this is part of a pressure strategy 
to barter an approval of RFC 3066 bis (also documented in another 
list as ready to be implemented by the IANA). I do not think this 
kind of IETF detrimental practice should be tolerated, all the more 
from a respected signatoree who engages the weight of his name and 
reputation. This is a violation of the Internet standard process 
rights of the opponents.

I accept that should there be an ISTF and an ISSG, my opposition 
would have been expressed and addressed a long ago. The 
present  Internet standard process puts societal and architectural 
appeals at the end of the process, instead of at the begining through 
a review and an obligation to consider and respect the WG Charter. 
This certainly leads to more politicking than we should have. But 
this is not my choice. I have for months clearly described how I will 
use the rights of the users, through appeals inside and outside the IETF.

>to IESG people you work with on this issue.

Sincerely yours.
jfc

---

From: Mark Davis <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 09:34:59 -0800

> editorship of a document already in IESG Last Call, but I am now 

For certain people, I found early on that it was not worth reading any 
of their rantings; there is a difference between honest disagreement and 
this kind of pernicious misreadings and wild, out-of-scope assertions.

They'll look for any pretext to try to derail progress, but that will be 
the case no matter whether you reply to them or not. So best to just 
filter them out; or if you want to be on record as in opposition, do so 
to the effect that "the message is so filled with inaccuracies that it 
is not worth replying to in detail", since it just isn't worth your time 
to bother with them.

Of course, in a better world, there would be a good, responsive 
mechanism for excluding such people from disrupting real work, but the 
IETF gears turn, as we have seen, astonishingly slowly.

You have been doing a fine job as editor, and wouldn't want to see you 
driven away by this situation.

Mark

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 02:10:50 +0100

> IETF gears turn, as we have seen, astonishingly slowly.

One scenario to accelerate it would constitute a conflict
of interests, another scenario would involve the AD of
the general area, and that's the Chair.  IOU 0,02 €

---

From: r&d afrac <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 02:58:01 +0100

At 18:34 08/11/2005, Mark Davis wrote:
>>the editorship of a document already in IESG Last Call, but I am 
>>now asking Randy and Martin to investigate this for 
>>draft-ietf-ltru-initial.  I mentioned this possible course of 
>>action in private e-mails yesterday and have received no response 
>>at all, which perhaps is telling in its own way.
>
>For certain people, I found early on that it was not worth reading 
>any of their rantings;

Dear Mark,
I feel really sorry that you resort to this kind of off topic 
rant/trick to avoid documenting the exclusive convergence of RFC 3066 
bis and of your own CLDR project and the way it helps the filtering 
issue this WG deals with (your own document we should currently discuss).

- CLDR is explicitly mentioned to the WG-ltru Charter, so I do not 
see your problem? Even if we never analysed the Charter yet. I want 
(as I suppose every other member) to be sure its particular filtering 
adequation to RFC 3066 bis was worth the exclusion of the other SSDO 
solutions, of ISO 11179 conformance, of RFC 4151 ABNF, etc. and of 
the other better schemes Addison documented he might propose.

- I wish also to be sure we are not going to indirectly introduce 
proprietary solutions/patents into the core of "globalized" Linux via 
this CLDR/LDML (we should then use Asianux?). I must say that I am 
worried because you do not answer my request for a formal warranty 
that the CLDR project will permanently and totally stay open use. And 
no obligation whatsoever to Unicode or/and to Unicode member will be 
borne from using CLDR locale files in relation with RFC 3066 bis. I 
must say I have difficulty understanding why the relation and waiver 
implied by the WG-ltru Charter, is no part of the proposed draft, as 
the copyright wording for the UN and ISO tables was not added to the 
registry. I like the legal things to be carried in a legal way. There 
are countries where the carelessness may be acceptable, there are 
others where it is not.

I am in particular concerned be the following Unicode wording not 
being adapted to the IETF legal wording.
<quote>
- Any person is hereby authorized, without fee, to view, use, 
reproduce, and distribute all documents and files solely for 
informational purposes in the creation of products supporting the 
Unicode Standard, subject to the Terms and Conditions herein.
(question: what about other usages?)

- Further specifications of rights and restrictions pertaining to the 
use of the particular set of data files known as the "Unicode 
Character Database" can be found in Exhibit 1.
(question: this exhibit does not seem to cover RFC 3066 bis/CLDR 
joint usage, however mentioned in the WG-ltru Charter)

Each version of the Unicode Standard has further specifications of 
rights and restrictions of use. For the book editions, these are 
found on the back of the title page. For the online edition, certain 
files (such as the PDF files for book chapters and code charts) carry 
specific restrictions. All other files are covered under these 
general Terms of Use.  To request a permission to reproduce any part 
of the Unicode Standard, please contact the Unicode Consortium.
(question: would it not be better once for all to provide the 
necessary permission to IETF and Internet users, as an appendix of 
RFC 3066 bis?)
</quote>

>there is a difference between honest disagreement and this kind of 
>pernicious misreadings and wild, out-of-scope assertions.

This "wild, out-of-scope" assertions, are (?) - while we discuss 
their implication in the filtering document:
- either a requested clarification over a plainly new reading of the 
"GB" ISO 3166 by the author of the proposed registry.
- or the relation between RFC 3066 bis and CLDR ... which  is part of 
the Charter (however the Charter does not introduce exclusive).

I note that this exclusive again others, therefore against my own 
organization work, is our _only_ point of contention.

An honest statement of yours as a President of Unicode affirming an 
open use of the CLDR and locale introduced data; and as an author of 
the Draft of a non ABNF exclusion of RFC 4151, ISO 11179, other SSDOs 
would immediately clarify that contention.

>They'll look for any pretext to try to derail progress, but that 
>will be the case no matter whether you reply to them or not. So best 
>to just filter them out; or if you want to be on record as in 
>opposition, do so to the effect that "the message is so filled with 
>inaccuracies that it is not worth replying to in detail", since it 
>just isn't worth your time to bother with them.

"derail progress" is an odd term to qualify Internet standard process 
appeal rights against a terminal option for the IETF.
This pratice of yours will be helpfull to IESG, IAB or others to 
understand why you were unable to respond my repeated consensual 
harmonisation propositions.

>mechanism for excluding such people from disrupting real work, but 
>the IETF gears turn, as we have seen, astonishingly slowly.

Such a statement is your responsibility. You are at liberty to 
propose, as I suggested some, changes in the Internet standard 
process to avoid such situations due to a lack of consideration of 
societal, cultural and human prerequisites and the priority of common 
good over commercial interests and personal technical/political 
opinions or pride.

>You have been doing a fine job as editor, and wouldn't want to see 
>you driven away by this situation.

This has been expressed by everyone.
But  this does not change that Doug has duties to this WG debate.
It would really help, if you stayed on topic.

jfc morfin

---

From: "Scott Hollenbeck" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 21:18:31 -0500

(Speaking as LTRU Area Advisor)

Folks, one of your WG chairs has said [1] that discussion of this topic is
not helping the working group complete its final milestone.  It is time to
stop.  People who have been warned either privately or publicly about
off-topic posting are reminded that there may be consequences for ignoring
those warnings.

-Scott-
[1]
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ltru/current/msg04000.html