Subject: Example of the One Liners out of context

From: "Bound, Jim" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 21:02:40 -0400

We were asked to show examples of one liners from mail that create
confusion or is not constructive.  Here is a mail where Dave requests to
Randy more context, seems reasonable to me.  It was not a disagreement
but clarifying a statement.  See for yourself.

Please don't tell me this is not a problem :--)

Regards,
/jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Crocker [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Saturday, May 24, 2003 5:03 PM
To: Randy Bush
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Liaisons interoperation with NOMCOM members

Randy,

RB> as i think even charlie agreed, security is indeed an important 
RB> issue for today's internet.

Yet another, wonderfully clever unresponsive response. Gosh you're good
at them.

However, since your original posting was in fact *not* a forgery, it
means that an area director has made a public statement that a couple of
contributors are having a destructive effect.

Your position carries an obligation to do more than simply make such
pronouncements.

You have an obligation to explain them.

On the natural assumption that you, yourself, have constructive intent,
then please engage in forthcoming dialogue, rather than just launching
such public criticisms and then trying to dodge the consequences.

d/

>> alas, from the received headers, this means that your system, 
>> psg.com, has been compromised.
>> 
>> i guess that would explain a number of different postings purporting 
>> to be from you, recently, that did indeed have a more even-handed 
>> tone than usual.
>> 
>> d/
>> 
>> RB> it should be obvious by the kind tone of the message that it was 
>> RB> a forgery.
>> 
>> >> on the offchance that I am the 'dave' you are referring to, I 
>> >> tried to figure out what your posting referred to.  It certainly 
>> >> did not refer to the thread it occurred in, since no dave or john 
>> >> had yet posted.
>> >> 
>> >> so, Randy, please clarify.
>> >> 
>> >> d/
>> >> 
>> >> RB> btw, i think both dave and john think they are being 
>> >> RB> constructive and are acting with good intent.  i just don't 
>> >> RB> think that is the result.
>> >> 
>> >> RB> randy
>> >> 
>> >> 
>> >> RB>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------
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>> >> 
>> >> 
>> >> d/
>> >> --
>> >>  Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>  Brandenburg 
>> >> InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>  Sunnyvale, CA  USA 
>> >> <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>
>> >> 
>> 
>> 
>> RB> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>> RB> To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription
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>> 
>> 
>> d/
>> --
>>  Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
>>  Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>  Sunnyvale,

>> CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>
>> 

RB> ----------------------------------------------------------------
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d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>  Sunnyvale, CA
USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>

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---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 07:25:22 -0700

i do not think that adding a process director to the iesg is
constructive, and would be in fact destructive.  we don't need to
politicize the wgs, iesg, secretariat as we already have this wg.
we should leave some parts of the organization to do actual ietf
work.

and all this seems like so much red herring, without even sour
cream, but plenty of confrontationalism, polarization, etc.  no
real substance, all politics, at which we engnineers are so expert
(not).  so we destroy our organization and our culture with it.
omplalo-sepsis.

dunno about you, but i spent years in the iso, ieee, ansi, ...  i
came here to get engineering work done, not play amateur power
politics, voting blocks, ....  the focus on real work has been the
ietf's strength and the root of its success.  i suggest we play to
our strengths, not divisiveness, mud-slinging, and demagoguery.

randy

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 21:44:25 +0200

what do other people think here?

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 May 2003 13:35:46 -0700

> what do other people think here?
Maybe I've misunderstood Randy, but "real work vs. politics"
strikes me as a false opposition. Getting real work done in
organizations with more than a few people who have divergent
goals is an inherently political activity. Sure, that sort
of politics can be conducted in a more or less civilized
manner, but I don't think it's really avoidable.

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   [email-masked]]
                http://www.rtfm.com/

---

From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 16:41:42 -0400

> >we should leave some parts of the organization to do actual ietf

I would not have a process director per se -- that feels like too much
permanent infrastructure -- but we do have plenty to do on process.  How
about something like NomCom -- let's not have 3000 people arguing
endlessly about process, but let's do have a periodically refreshed
small design team looking at problems, consulting with experienced
IETFers, proposing designs and determining rough consensus.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 16:57:58 -0400

> what do other people think here?

A few days ago I was in support of having another AD, if for no other
reason than I thought it might help us get past the issue of who can be
trusted to manage the WG, and on to the real issue of how IETF should be run. 

After thinking about it some more and reading the conversations on this list
I'm now slightly against the idea, because it seems to me to actually be
encouraging the witch-hunt mentality.  I'm also convinced that it would
probably be disruptive to IESG--especially if that new AD saw it as his job to
"fix" IESG.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 08:38:28 -0700

> IETFers, proposing designs and determining rough consensus.  

i was not an advocate of the closing of the poised or poisson wg.

randy

---

From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 12:34:53 -0400

> i was not an advocate of the closing of the poised or poisson wg.

But don't let it get entrenched and stuck in its ways (part of the
problem) either, hence "something like NomCom".

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 21:58:17 +0200

> manner, but I don't think it's really avoidable.

I think we may have a language problem on our hands.....

to me, the unique feature that attracted me to engineering is the fact that 
when an engineer has done his/her work well, the value of the result is 
greater than the value of what we started with.
In the IETF, this translates to "standards are beneficial to everybody".

I think "politics" derives from "polis" - city? - it's what humans do when 
they get together in large groups.
But what an engineer who says he "hates politics" means is, I think, more 
often related to an image of "politics" where the underlying logic is that 
of  splitting a fixed-size pie; in order to win, I have to make someone 
else lose; if someone else benefits, it means that I have less.

I think that's not the kind of politics we want to play. But that's not the 
only form of politics there is.

              Harald

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 16:27:31 -0400

> But what an engineer who says he "hates politics" means is, I think,
> more often related to an image of "politics" where the underlying
> logic is that of  splitting a fixed-size pie; in order to win, I have
> to make someone else lose; if someone else benefits, it means that I
> have less.

I've always thought of engineers' hatred of politics as a distaste for
some of the practices considered necessary in political activity in
order to accomplish what needs to be done -- such as pretending that
things are different than they really are in order to avoid offending
some powerful person or group, or manipulation of people and groups
using power, coercion, propaganda, ego-stroking, etc.  None of which
means that you can't end up with a win-win situation, but the dishonesty
inherent in such practices makes it difficult to see what a win-win
situation might look like.

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: 28 May 2003 14:09:46 -0700

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

> to me, the unique feature that attracted me to engineering is the fact
> that when an engineer has done his/her work well, the value of the
> result is greater than the value of what we started with.
>

Unfortunately, the two statements "greater than the value of what
we started with" and "beneficial to everybody" are not equivalent,
and I think that's part of the communication problem. For example,
consider what would happen if we were to magically deploy
IPsec in such a way that it caused no pain to any user. 
Beneficial to everyone, right? Well, not to the bad guys
who wanted to read your traffic. To take a more realistic
example, it's not clear that AOL benefits from the IETF
actually having a successful IM standard. [0]

> I think "politics" derives from "polis" - city? - it's what humans do
> when they get together in large groups.
> 
> I think that's not the kind of politics we want to play. But that's
> not the only form of politics there is.
Indeed, it's not.

It's certainly true that there are political situations that are
zero sum games, but that's not the only kind of politics there 
is. One of the most important kinds of politics is deciding how
to coordinate positive-sum games.

To take an example from standards again, consider what
happens when we're trying to design a new network protocol.
One decision we have to make is whether to use an XML encoding
or an ASN.1 encoding. Neither is inherently better, but 
XML is much more convenient for people who already process
XML and ASN.1 is much more convenient for people who already
have ASN.1 codecs. 

So, assume we have company X-Ray, which currently uses XML 
and company Abel, which uses ASN.1. Their preference rankings
are shown below:

Abel:     ASN.1, XML, No standard
X-Ray:    XML, ASN.1, No standard

Now, both Abel and X-Ray are willing to lose the encoding battle
if that's what it takes in order to get a standard, but they'd
naturally rather win. [1] It's precisely this kind of situation
where politics is important, even if not particularly attractive.
Because if we don't find some way to do that kind of politics,
then we're left with No standard, which is even worse.

-Ekr

[0] Generally, "better for everyone" is known as "Pareto-dominant"
and "greater than the value of what we started with" is known as
"economically efficient".

[1] In this case, both ASN.1 and XML are Pareto-optimal.

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   [email-masked]]
           Web Log: http://www.rtfm.com/movabletype

---

From: "Jeanette Hofmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 23:08:58 +0200

> they get together in large groups.

Polis in the Greek sense marks a social space, which consists of free 
people with equal status and rights who are concerned with the well 
being of all members. 
The polis strives for the good life. A distinction between politics and 
technology doesn't make sense in such a concept of politics. 

The IETF could be interpreted as a polis in the modern sense. It is 
supposed to care about the Internet as opposed to single companies or 
applications. 

Jeanette

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: 28 May 2003 14:24:37 -0700

> supposed to care about the Internet as opposed to single companies or 

The problem, is that "care about the Internet" isn't really a
well-formed concept, any more than "the public good" is. One can, of
course, adopt any number of theories designed to give it concrete
meaning, but I doubt we could get consensus on any of them.

-Ekr

---

From: "Jeanette Hofmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 23:46:16 +0200

On 28 May 2003 at 14:24, Eric Rescorla wrote:

> well-formed concept, any more than "the public good" is. 

Actually, I meant to point out the difference between care about the Internet 
as a whole and more narrow minded interests. A Greek definition of politics 
covers the comprehensive approach. I agree with you, concepts such as  care 
for the Internet are in need of  specification. In any case, I made this whole 
point in support of your remark regarding false oppositions between real work 
and politics. 

One can, of
> meaning, but I doubt we could get consensus on any of them.

Are you implying that the IETF could not agree on a mission? Because that is 
what I think a mission should also be about.

jeanette

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: 28 May 2003 15:07:56 -0700

> point in support of your remark regarding false oppositions between real work 
Indeed. I was trying to sharpen the point rather than seem as
if I was directly contradicting you. My writing could have been
a bit better there :(

> what I think a mission should also be about.

I'm having a hard time believing that the IETF is going to come
to some agreement on e.g., economic efficiency versus minimax
as the metric for good of the Internet. 

-Ekr

---

From: "Jeanette Hofmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 00:13:40 +0200

> as the metric for good of the Internet. 

Perhaps this is naïve but I would think the starting point of a mission 
should be to make explicit the common ground of every day working 
group discussion. Now, don't tell me there is no or only little common 
ground. You wouldn't be able to communicate in the first place if you 
didn't share crucial concepts, goals and values. To some degree it 
depends on the language whether you can agree on value based 
issues. 

jeanette

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: 28 May 2003 15:59:05 -0700

> depends on the language whether you can agree on value based 

I think the problem is that we can all pretty much agree on what
our individual incentives are but that we don't have a consensus
on how to aggregate those preferences. But that's where a lot
of the politicing comes in.

-Ekr

---

From: "Daniel O. Awduche" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 20:54:36 -0400

In the organizational setting, "politics" generally refers to
'activities taken to acquire power, influence, and other capabilities
to obtain one's preferred outcomes in situations where there is
disagreement or uncertainty about choices...'

Cheers,
/Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked]
[mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Keith
Moore
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2003 4:28 PM
To: Harald Tveit Alvestrand
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked];
[email-masked]
Subject: Re: IESG restructuring (Re: Example of the One Liners out of
context)