Subject: Circle of Fifths

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:04:00 -0700 (PDT)

Maybe we should invite this guy to our plenary, it's been a while 
since we heard drums or anything similar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iCVGkeLvaQ

And look at ALL those sponsors ;-)

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972   Mobile: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: [email-masked]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

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From: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:37:47 +0100

Actually ICANN/IANA should contribute to IETF, possibly no just via
sponsorship but a more stable way.

In fact, if they are able to exist (and make money) is because we do
protocols, right ?

Regards,
Jordi

> From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
> Reply-To: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
> Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:04:00 -0700 (PDT)
> To: The IETF <[email-masked]>
> Subject: Circle of Fifths
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

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---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:55:40 -0700 (PDT)

Jordi,

You're not the first one to suggest that, but they do have a very 
different "business model" including covering travel for certain
people and charging no meeting fees. It might make sense for us to
approach the "domain industry" directly though...

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen

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From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:44:40 -0700

> since we heard drums or anything similar:

Well, even given the way he plays, I am pretty sure that a guitar is not classed 
as a percussion instrument...

Perhaps if we stopped banging out specs and learned to strum, not hum, we could 
get those sponsors.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

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From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:46:31 -0700

>approach the "domain industry" directly though...

The "domain industry" does not profit from the IETF work nearly as much as ICANN does. Take the past two day's of press coverage for ICANN, for example. They are being lauded for making the domain name system usable in other scripts as if this was their doing. Nothing in ICANN's press releases pointed out that literally tens of thousands of hours of volunteer time had been spent by the IETF over the past decade to make this work.

ICANN gets millions of dollars of PR value from the work that the IETF does, whereas the "domain industry" gets very little. ICANN should strongly consider helping pay for that work.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:07:37 -0700 (PDT)

"Millions of dollars of PR value"? What exactly does that mean, Paul? 
More to the point: How is ICANN funded? Unless I'm mistaken, they are 
funded by registrar/registry fees and, yes, application for new TLD 
fees, all of which comes from a healthy domain industry. That's not to 
say that ICANN shouldn't or couldn't fund technical work of course, 
but let's be clear about how the money is actually flowing.

And with sponsorship money comes a whole lot of things that we geeks
have typically wanted to stay well clear of such as "value" for the 
sponsors in a number of different ways, but yes, I agree we may not
be able to stay pure forever.

The press release may not have mentioned the IETF, but the work of the 
technical community certainly WAS mantioned directly as well as 
indirectly during this entire event. Maybe we should ask Thomas Narten
to summarise this for us, he is the IETF-ICANN liaison.

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen

On Sat, 31 Oct 2009, Paul Hoffman wrote:

> The "domain industry" does not profit from the IETF work nearly as 
> much as ICANN does. Take the past two day's of press coverage for 
> ICANN, for example. They are being lauded for making the domain name 
> system usable in other scripts as if this was their doing. Nothing 
> in ICANN's press releases pointed out that literally tens of 
> thousands of hours of volunteer time had been spent by the IETF over 
> the past decade to make this work.
> 
> ICANN gets millions of dollars of PR value from the work that the 
> IETF does, whereas the "domain industry" gets very little. ICANN 
> should strongly consider helping pay for that work.
> 
> --Paul Hoffman, Director
> --VPN Consortium
>

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:29:14 -0700

>"Millions of dollars of PR value"? What exactly does that mean, Paul?

Legitimacy by publicity. Having their name (well, mostly their acronym) repeated in every news venue across the world. That legitimacy is just as important to ICANN as it is to, for example, an SDO.

>but let's be clear about how the money is actually flowing.

Fully agree. It is flowing from many smaller players into a central repository, ICANN. Thus, it makes more sense for that central repository to pay for the technical underpinnings on which it relies than to ask all the smaller players to pay a second tax (although them doing so would certainly be welcomed as well).

>be able to stay pure forever.

As if we ever were. Purity is a continuum. The IETF's leadership is funded by companies that are both generous *and* who see the value to themselves of having good leaders in their technical areas of interest. The same is true for the companies that contribute to ISOC; the vast majority of their corporate contributors are companies in the Internet technical realm who are both generous *and* who see the value to themselves. If that weren't the case, we would see many more large ISOC contributors from companies outside the tech field. For example, the large pharma companies get huge value out of the Internet existing, and often contribute to organizations that help others, but are nowhere to be found on  <http://www.isoc.org/orgs/members.php>.

>indirectly during this entire event.

The latter is good to hear, but it s the former where ICANN gets their credibility in the world.

> Maybe we should ask Thomas Narten

Nah, then he would appear on his own weekly summary of people posting here.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:30:10 -0600

Paul Hoffman <paul dot hoffman at vpnc dot org> wrote:

> Take the past two day's of press coverage for ICANN, for example. They 
> are being lauded for making the domain name system usable in other 
> scripts as if this was their doing. Nothing in ICANN's press releases 
> pointed out that literally tens of thousands of hours of volunteer 
> time had been spent by the IETF over the past decade to make this 
> work.

Indeed, the top new item on today's English Wikipedia page reads: "The 
Internet regulator ICANN approves plans to allow Unicode top-level 
domains for the first time."  Thus not only does ICANN get the credit, 
but "Unicode" continues to be used to mean "non-Latin-script."

--
Doug Ewell  |  Thornton, Colorado, USA  |  http://www.ewellic.org
RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14  |  ietf-languages @ http://is.gd/2kf0s

---

From: Doug Barton <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:00:18 -0700

> sponsorship but a more stable way.

You mean above and beyond providing the IANA function?

-- 

	Improve the effectiveness of your Internet presence with
	a domain name makeover!    http://SupersetSolutions.com/

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 31 Oct 2009 18:38:51 -0000

>>fees, all of which comes from a healthy domain industry. ...

>Fully agree. It is flowing from many smaller players into a central
>repository, ICANN. Thus, it makes more sense for that central
>repository to pay for the technical underpinnings on which it relies
>than to ask all the smaller players to pay a second tax (although
>them doing so would certainly be welcomed as well).

Um, the IETF is funded by the domain industry right now.  The .ORG
domain is owned by PIR, which funnels its surplus to ISOC, which uses
a part of that to fund the IETF.  The 2009 ISOC budget says that
nearly all their revenue comes from .ORG, $15M from PIR vs $1.7M from
everything else.  They budget $1.4 million to cover a combination of
IETF/IASA operations and $260K for IETF capital projects which I
gather means tools. The budget predicits a roughly constant IETF
contrubution other than tools, and an ISOC surplus of over $1M/yr
going forward, despite ramping up a lot of other projects.  I get the
impression that in view of the gusher of cash arriving from PIR, if
the IETF presented a reasonable case for getting more money from the
ISOC, it would be hard for them to say no.

Over in ICANN land, the domain money arrives roughly half through the
registries, which mostly means Verisign, with Afilias (who handles the
back end for .ORG as well as other domains) and Neustar being the
other significant ones. The other half comes from registrars, Godaddy,
NSI, etc.  ICANN, despite its nominal non-profit status, is vastly
profitable.  The current FY10 budget has revenue of $63M, spending
$57M, with $5M left over.  They expect their revenue just from .COM
registry fees to go from $12M to $18M due to raising the fee.

The budget for IANA, which also includes software tools used elsewhere
in ICANN, is $5M.  To put it in perspective, that's about the same as
the entire IETF.  It includes $150K spent on a consultant to tell them
about IANA's "business excellence", whatever that is.

If the IETF wants more money from ISOC or ICANN, it shouldn't be hard
to get. It would need some discipline to put together a budget, some
material on why it should be funded more from subsidy than from
increasing the meeting fees, and then go pitch it to our pals at ISOC
and ICANN.

R's,
John

---

From: David Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:44:24 -0700 (PDT)

On Sat, 31 Oct 2009, Doug Ewell wrote:

>> Take the past two day's of press coverage for ICANN, for example. They are 
>> being lauded for making the domain name system usable in other scripts as 
>> if this was their doing. Nothing in ICANN's press releases pointed out that 
>> literally tens of thousands of hours of volunteer time had been spent by 
>> the IETF over the past decade to make this work.
>
> Internet regulator ICANN approves plans to allow Unicode top-level domains 
> for the first time."  Thus not only does ICANN get the credit, but "Unicode" 
> continues to be used to mean "non-Latin-script."

'tis my understanding that most anyone can edit WikiPedi ... fix it?