[discuss] /1net Steering/Coordination Commitee

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 09:22:51PM +0100, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote:
> 
> I am actually *disturbed* by the naivety with which this is all being
> set-up. This line-up is the *best* way to have the multi-stakeholder
> model ridiculed & shot down -- as in, the "multi-stakeholder model" is
> nothing but window dressing for US multi-nationals to keep their control
> over the Internet. 

Why?  It just turns out that we've named that "stakeholder" group
incorrectly.  It's not the business stakeholder group.  It's the large
US business interest group.  They're a stakeholder.  We just need a
different set to represent other kinds of stake, such as small
businesses or non-US businesses or whatever.

This is, in fact, the very reason I have been uncomfortable with the
representative-of-group model that's being pursued, and part of why I
have refused to volunteer as any sort of representative of "the
Technical Community".  I have no idea what the boundary of that
community is, I am pretty sure that I can't represent all of it, and I
have no idea how I could legitimately claim to.

In my opinion, the constitution of the steering/co-ordinating/whatever
we call it committee is just illegitmate.  There's no way for anyone
to tell who represents any constituency, and the chance that the
representation is somehow wrong approaches 1.

I'm aware that we need to bootstrap this effort.  My claim is that it
would be more legitimate if we did that _ad hoc_ until such time as we
have some things running.  That way, we don't drown the effort in
early wrangling over committee structure, internal governance,
legitimacy of participants to represent anyone, and so on.  Instead,
by trying to build the org structure first, we have wandered into
those topics without any way to declare disputes legitimately
resolved.

John Curran already provided a rebuttal to my argument, and I'm not
willing to wrangle over it.  But I think we have set things up
precisely to yield these sorts of results.  

Best regards,

Andrew
(as ever, for myself only)

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com