[ih] Why did TCP win? [Re: Internet-history Digest, Vol 63, Issue 3

[Bob Purvy]

> He said he asked who wanted resolution of this, and nearly all the hands
went up.

> He said he then noted the lack of wg progress and offered that
resolution would not be possible unless enough folk changed their choice.

What you're talking about here is *leadership*. It's not the same as
"management."

I'd suggest, without having been at those OSI meetings, that that form of
leadership was lacking.

On Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 9:47 AM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
> > I think your comment about "unanimity" is a bit misleading. As I
> > recall, there were always some people who wanted more, but the
> > leadership assumed its burden and said No, and everyone respected them
> > enough to leave it at that.
>
>
> The 'rough consensus' model dominated Arpanet and Internet work, where
> that 'strongly dominant agreement' made the decisions, quite a bit more
> than an authority's breaking a logjam.  (Again, I said 'more', rather
> than always or never.)
>
> There are always people who want more.  There are always people who are
> never satisfied.  That why 'rough' is such an apt word, and especially
> given that it has two meanings, both of which apply.
>
> I frequently cite Bob Hinden's example of a working group's being
> deadlocked.  At a meeting, he did yet-another round of hand-raisings for
> either of the two preferred choices and it was, yet again, clear that
> neither one was strongly dominant.
>
> He said he asked who wanted resolution of this, and nearly all the hand
> went up.
>
> He said he then noted the lack of wg progress and offered that
> resolution would not be possible unless enough folk changed their choice.
>
> He then did another round of hand-raising and one of the choices was
> finally dominant.
>
> I did a variant of this years later, at MAAWG, for the DKIM revision.
> DKIM has the task of delivering an authenticated domain name, to
> indicate its owner takes 'some' responsibility for a message. This
> defines a relatively noise-free message stream, for reputation analysis.
>
> But we made an error in the original specification and provided two
> places for specifying a domain name, with no indication which was the
> one to be used for assessments.
>
> The community debated the choice for a very long time, with no
> resolution.  I reviewed the online discussion and solicited a small
> group from it to have a separate exchange.  I selected people based on
> their willingness to discuss things reasonably, rather than because they
> agreed with my own preference.  The resulting set of folk actually
> tended toward the choice I didn't want, but at this point, some
> resolution was better than none.
>
> My role was strictly as facilitator.  (I started by noting my preference
> only once, just to acknowledge it.) The group had a healthy debate and
> did reach a rough consensus.  That group then went back to the main
> discussion and the force of a coherent preference among a core of strong
> contributors got the rest of the community to resolve the choice.
>
> Specifications succeed because they work and they are supported and they
> get built and they get deployed.
>
> No formal authority can guarantee that that entire sequence will happen,
> because there is no authority with that much power.
>
> Except the authority of the community.
>
> d/
>
> --
> Dave Crocker
>
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
> bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
> mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social
>
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