Subject: Re: [iucg] idna-mapping update

From: Marie-France Berny <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:52:19 +0100

Patrik,

I shut my mouth for a long for two reasons. (1) As a Jedi (Jefsey's
Disciple) I will not be listen to. (2) Because I felt that what
characterizes the termination of this WG is confusion.

 You, Harald, John came with the demand for a job to be done. That job was
confirmed by the IESG and IAB under the form of a Charter. Jefsey asked if
the Charter or the Users' need was the limit. Vint answered the Charter.
They opposed when Vint wanted the IETF to be the limit. That was corrected.
And we had a very satisfactory solution.

Unexpectedly that solution was opposed by the AD using out the limit
questions (no-mapping says the Charter, why asks the AD; IDNA says the
Charter, will IDNA work asks the AD; minimize the transition issues says the
Charter; what about the aesthetics of GG's (Greek and German "s"s) asks the
AD, etc.). In the meanwhile ICANN has upset the better half of the world in
stating that its non-roman ccTLDs Fast Track was the new limit. A new limit
they committed to describe publicly but do not so far, in spite of the
support of the Chair.

2009/12/22 Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
But, more importantly, TR46 is a Unicode Document. Not an IETF document.
Discussions about that document should be in the proper venue. And Unicode
Consortium just like ICANN is waiting for us in IETF to "just be done" so
they (and W3C and whatever else) can do "their job".

I am pretty sure I think we have enough good text in the mappings document
and in rationale. We talk about transition, we talk about mappings etc,
but...I do not think IETF is the correct venue for that work.

Sure, we have a pretty good document. However there are people who dislike
that it is so pretty good. So they made it lame. Not obsolete, but lame,
because it is part of architecture, and that architecture (IDNA) is lame. We
all know that the AD's questions are pertinent. But this IETF/WG was NOT the
venue retained for that work. The good venue is either:

- the IAB, if we want the solution to be an act of God. However, would the
IAB be a multilinguistic god we would know it for a long.
- the IETF Users. This currently means ICANN, GDNS, Asia, IUCG, may be ITU
on one side and the manufacturers (Browsers), services (Search Engines) and
Internet Users on other sides.

Patrick Suger told the AD position does not make technical sense: to forward
the document set and question the Mapping document the document set
consensus is built upon. True.

However, it makes a pretty governance sens. It spells out to the IESG: "here
is the whole problem, due to ICANN Seoul policy u-turn, Unicode
incertitudes, Microsoft push, Asian absence, IUCG possible extended
architecture and appeals, we cannot address it smoothly anymore at WG level
as we all hoped and worked it out. They are going to oppose at an
architectural level which may rebuild the whole Internet as ICANN and IUCG
claim it does. I cannot address this alone in three months."

IMHO, until IESG discusses it on January 7th we can have a nice familly Xmas
time, and for some to pray for the Internet Users not to have a real
IDNA2010 solution by their own that would actually enforce IDNA2008 and ...
French Majuscules (be sure nothing will be spared to you as long as
Project.FRA cannot be in the root before AFNIC sells IDNs, and that IDNs are
case sensitive as our real target (Intersem) requires it, sorry but French
speakers [from everywhere] aslo are stubborn :-))

Merry Xmas to all.

Marie-France Berny (JD)