[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] The message to the community (was Re: Cancellation of RDS PDP WG meetings at ICANN62)

[Andrew Sullivan]

Dear colleagues,

I certainly appreciate the notice from the Chairs (and indeed, I have
not made my travel plans yet).  But I think we are permitting
formalism to get in the way of plain talk:

On Wed, May 09, 2018 at 05:03:41PM -0700, Chuck wrote:

> Whatever happens, it will be up to the Council and the GNSO as a whole to
> determine the status of the RDS PDP WG going forward.

It seems to me blindingly obvious that the RDS PDP has not come to a
successful conclusion, but that events mean that we _have_ come to a
conclusion.  The fact that all these other things are going on and
that there is all this uncertainty suggests to me that the ICANN
community would be better served if we simply admitted it and sent
them that message, loud and clear, before Panama.  There is no hope
whatever that anything resembling this WG is going to be reconvened to
solve the same problems.  We ought to state forthrightly that, at
least under our previous charter, we argued for two years and barely
made a dent in this topic.

We failed.  We should have the courage to admit it so that the ICANN
community can take that into account in whatever it tries to do next.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com