Re: [ietf-provreg] registries, XML & EPP (again)

[Andrew Sullivan <andrew@ca.afilias.info>]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 10:40:05AM +0200, Klaus Malorny wrote:

> favourite car brand. Both won't separate the language field into a common 
> extension that just takes care about the contact's language, which would, 
> on the other hand, be the only correct way from a protocol's perspective. 
> The uncontrolled extensibility of a protocol is the protocol's death. Take, 

This argument is nonsense.  It is simply a dogmatic insistence that
people can't compromise to make general operation smoother for
everyone, even if the cost of that is a slightly greater burden for
particular individuals.  If that is true, the IETF is a complete
waste of time.

It happens to be true that sometimes people act unco-operatively: the
"Tragedy of the Commons" is neither impossible nor unknown.  But it
isn't a law of nature, either; and the successful functioning of
commons in parts of the world during various historical periods
proves as much.[1]  

It is also lamentably true that some people in the registry community
are unwilling to co-operate to make things overall easier for
everyone over the long run.  That does not entail that protocols
designed to serve such co-operation are doomed; and in fact, the
extremely helpful comments I received from folks on this list (and
also, earlier, from Scott Hollenbeck and James Gould) when I raised
some issues that we at Afilias had experienced demonstrates to me
that co-operation is possible.  Others used some of their time to
help co-ordinate a response to a problem that I had.

> There are likely no two implementations of the [whois] protocol by
> two unrelated entities that are compatible. Those registrars who
> have implemented ICANN's Registrar Transfer Policy for thin
> registries know what this means. So from a protocol's perspective,
> it is the best to nail down everything, and if any extensions are
> required, to have a standardization body to define them. 

By this logic, HTML is also a failure, because of the ease with which
people were able to ignore the recommendations of the W3C and create
horrors like <blink> or <bgsound> tags.  X- headers in email are also
an abomination, because nobody can control them and so systems use
them in ways that aren't approved by your favourite official
standards dictator.  I don't see that such positions are tenable. 
That an extensible protocol may be made so flexible as to be no
protocol at all is hardly news.  But it's some sort of reverse
bald-man fallacy to assert therefore that every flexible protocol
will never work.

We do have a standards body for these things: it's the IETF.  If
some people don't like the way it works and the costs it imposes
(like, for instance, that one has to co-operate with others when the
standards are being designed), well, they'll go play in some other
sandbox in exactly the way you describe.  But of course, they're free
to do that anyway: the design of the Internet all but ensures that
the level of protocol we're talking about simply can't be enforced by
anyone, except maybe through contractual obligations.  

Now, this sort of standardisation is, of course, dependent on people
playing nice.  It turns out that every sort of reasonably happy human
endeavour works the same way.  You can make any city nominally safe
and clean through the means of a police state; but the safe, clean
cities we like are the ones where the residents mostly don't need to
be forced not to beat each other up and not to dump their garbage
wherever they happen to be standing.  And that requires the majority
of residents to co-operate.

A

[1] Note that this is not an argument that the Internet is a commons
or any other such side issue.

-- 
----
Andrew Sullivan                         204-4141 Yonge Street
Afilias Canada                        Toronto, Ontario Canada
<andrew@ca.afilias.info>                              M2P 2A8
                                        +1 416 646 3304 x4110