IWP Charter

From IUCG - Internet Users Contributing Group

!draft       draft-iucg-charter
!version     00
!header      http://iucg.org/
!abbrev      IUCG Charter 
!title       Charter of the Internet Users Contributing Group
!month       January
!year        2009

!! Data
!key         users
!key         charter 
!key         contributing  
!key         IETF

!rfc         3935
!rfc         2418
!rfc         3774
!rfc         3869

!author
!initials    J-F C
!surname     Morfin
!fullname    Jean-Francois C. Morfin
!logo        Intlnet
!org         INTLNET
!street      23 rue Saint Honore
!city        Versailles
!postcode    78000
!country     France
!phone       (33.1) 39 50 05 10
!mail        jefsey@jefsey.com
!uri         http://intlnet.org

!abstract

Within the IETF community the IUCG specializes in welcoming those users of (1) the IETF deliverables, who trust or/and adapt them in order to build, implement, use and manage their own network propositions, solutions and products, and (2) of the global Internet who perceive it as their common by-product.

!text

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. It is open to any interested individual. The IETF Mission Statement is documented in RFC 3935. Within this community the IUCG specializes in welcoming those users of (1) the IETF deliverables, who trust or/and adapt them in order to build, use and manage their own network solutions and products, and (2) of the global Internet who perceive it as their common by-product.

The name is IUCG: Internet Users Contributing Group. This group is permanent.

Its General Discussion mailing list is iucg@ietf.org.

Mission of the Internet Users Contributing Group

The IUCG should strive to participate to the IETF as a permanent, innovative, structured, useful, contributing and documenting channel to the IETF from the Users of IETF documents and of the Internet, in which these documents influence the design, use, and management [RFC 3935]. It is open to anyone that wants to positively participate in the exchange of ideas and opinions towards a better Internet.

A User Interface

The target of the IUCG in interfacing lead users and developpers, and possibly ordinary users (or their representatives), with the IETF are:

To welcome diversity

The Diversity of languages, visions, trainings, working methods, interests, etc. is a world reality to be respected, technically supported and benefited from. This means to:

assist and interface those users who do not have the time, resources, interests, and competence to productively engage in an IETF process.
assist Internet Users in presenting multiconsensual Internet Drafts in turn gathering the diversity of their suggestions.
training and informing the most dedicated users so that they might directly contribute to IETF working groups.
welcome multilingual debate and work on multilinguistics as the discipline of the practical coexistence within the today cultural and lingual diversity.

To reduce the engineering divide

In a global environment there are engineer/user, analytic/systemic, legacy/innovation, ethical/technical, political/architectural, English/Multilingual, unilateral/multilateral, etc. dichotomies that have to be taken advantage from,

so that the IETF may better:

learn, from users, the specifications of the deliverables that they expect,
interactively advise the way that they build, use, enhance, and operate the real Internet,
take advantage from common interests that involves the real life network user community and governance.
consider the real life context as well as the users' technical needs and plans that imbricates so many usages and constraints, which in turn impact the Internet.
foresee how its solutions are perceived as conflicting or incomplete and may lead to users problems, unexpected or unwelcome practices and conflicting alternatives.

and users may not only discuss the ethical usage of technology but also, from its very conception, how technology may foster ethical usages (ethitechnics) and address innovative facilitation functions and services. To that end the IUCG will give great care not to creep into discussing the Human Rights and their application (therer are many other fora to that end) but to adapt their understanding to the Internet environment transition, how to translate it into technical expectations and built-in protections, and how the technical governance may assist and cooperate with the societal governance.

To permit users to indirectly cooperate in the Internet standardization process

This can be enabled by:

providing a home for a systemic approach in line with the users global daily experience and their expectation of a very short time to full and real operations, which calls for a more imbricated innovation, documentation, and experimentation mix, often prepared by their own running code.
presenting collective comments during IETF Last Calls or in shaping the collected user contributions in specialized pages and reports to the benefit of the IETF Working Groups.

To shorten the time to market, protect technical openness, and ensure operational pertinence

This can be implemented by:

helping to specify new protocols and by considering their future implication as much as possible at their outset, before some parts of them may become protected.
showing the IETF interest that adequate and diversified solutions hit the market in-time, so that they can be accepted and deployed more easily and broadly.
fostering an innovation integrated IETF culture that is able to better cope with the coming complex, multilateral, and semantic Internet and to make it not only work but also to continually work better and better.

A creative pool

"The principal thesis of [RFC 3869] is that if commercial funding is the main source of funding for future Internet research, the future of the Internet infrastructure could be in trouble. In addition to issues about which projects are funded, the funding source can also affect the content of the research, for example, towards or against the development of open standards, or taking varying degrees of care about the effect of the developed protocols on the other traffic on the Internet. ... There is [] much that could be done within the network research community to make Internet research more focused and productive".

The IUCG intends to address these RFC 3869 concerns by:

being a pool of self-funded user originated and people focused "practical expertise".
bringing usage oriented Internet research, innovation, testing and initial code development.
importing into the IETF new rough understandings for them to be debated prior to patent protection.
considering multiconsensus, where various ways of approaching a subject should be sub-consensually contributed and documented together with their possible mutual interoperability.
exploring, discussing, catalyzing, hosting, documenting through live demonstrations, etc. projects of interest to the IETF and the Internet Users' community.

Architectural R&D

The Information Society and usage have led to people centric and distributed system oriented perceptions of the Internet. There is, therefore, a need to help in identifying their differences and relations with the Internet legacy to better understand, compare, and discuss those comments and suggestions within the IETF if they are introduced within their contextual framework(s).

It will be the task of the IUCG to document the architectural context(s) to consistently home the user inputs. To that end, it will document and maintain one (or several if needed) well identified model(s) of the Internet, and the digital ecosystem. To be useful, such model(s) shall remain complementary to the Cartesian RFC 1958 analytical network-centric approach and decentralized network RFC 3935 values and to the most advanced research in areas going to affect the daily network and usage life (RFID, semantic, nanoization, quantum and grid computing, etc.)

This should be carried as an exploration of the necessary permanent transition of the Internet through to an iterative and concerted process of standardization, experimentation, transition, and innovation within the general scientific and societal paradigmatic change.

Support of the IETF precautionary principle

The IUCG wants to assist the IETF in its precautionary principle area, which is implied by RFC 3935 among the IETF cardinal principles. It wants to do it in adequately presenting users' objections and ongoing external reflections and works in ways conforming with the Internet standard process [RFC 2026].

This should permit WGs to:

benefit from anterior running code based experience.
freely and openly discuss external innovative thinking, usage development, solution under exploration or partial operation in their Charter's direct, indirect, or future interoperability area.
possibly include a pertinent "Precautionary considerations section" in their Drafts to document how their work does not put at risk, constrain, or conflict with any of them, prevents misreadings and dangerous users' technical creeps, and prepare a cooperation over the document evolution.

This should permit Users to:

consolidate disparate objections and non answered questions into a construed LC comment.
prepare possible Informational RFC or Best Practices over the document's related usage issues.
maintain an open network software library and a directory of current implementations.

This should also help the IESG to comply with the RFC 2418 precaution rule: "When determining whether it is appropriate to create a working group, the Area Director(s) and the IESG will consider several issues [including the question of] does a base of interested consumer (end-users) appear to exist for the planned work? Consumer interest can be measured by [the] participation of end-users within the IETF process, as well as by less direct means"

User documentation management

Users have a major problem when considering to contribute to the IETF: this comes from their poor access to topic exhaustiveness and history. As a part of its user interfacing role, the IUCG will strive to:

maintain and have published a comprehensive and structured documentation of the Internet.
cooperate to that end with WGs, the IETF Mailing List, and other SSDOs through their Chair or a Liaison.
maintain usage and operations related information tables, files and source code.

This documentation can extend to any Open Network Standards organization and its deliverable if they are consistent with the Multilingual Distribution Referent System (MDRS) used by the IUCG.

Organization and methodology

The IUCG is organized as an IETF General Area mailing list that is completed by its own website and working tools, (specialized sub-mailing lists, survey service, wiki, etc.).

in its general area of interest, it documents and maintains, based upon experience and users contributions, its own charter, organization, methods, and relations with the different IETF entities.
it wants to establish stable relations with Internet end and lead users and their organizations to best welcome their contribution.
it accepts contributions and debates in every language (with no warranty that anyone can understand and build upon them) as long as it is well understood and accepted that its documents will conform the ISO practice of texts in the English and French languages, and that the IETF language is the English language (RFC 3935).
it parallels the IETF engineer motto "rough consensus and running code" with its own "multi-consensus and living mode" user oriented motto.

Multilinguistic Considerations

The IUCG attempts to be a multilinguistic environment for IETF inputs. It hopes to learn from its own practice.

Security Considerations

The IUCG may serve as a "buffer" in case of internet vision conflicts, to discuss the alternative with the users or from a user's perspective.

IANA Considerations

The IUCG has no capacity to request IANA entry. It may dialog with the IANA on the best common way to support and make available documentation and information.

IWP Charter

From IUCG - Internet Users Contributing Group

Contents

Introduction