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Re: [atlarge-discuss] Bylaws



A 25 years experience in Chairing an international governance network related organization has tought me that bylaws were the last thing an e-organization is able to write, and that this is a very long a progressive and often uncessary process. It only needs current netiquette daily life recepees. If they are good they are used, if they are not they are forgotten

The key issue is the incorporation of a secratariat to anchor the organization into a legal reality and give it rights. The way to do it is obvious in French legal tradition countries; since this type of non profit community structure (associations) if the core of our societal life (France alone probably counts 1.5 millions of them; WSIS shows the number of them throughout Francophonie). I accept that it is far more complex to understand to common law cultures, as we see it with ICANN, which are accustomed to corporations.

And we see it with the Panels which tend to do the opposite to what Members demands. Members demand support, catalysis. The Panel quickly tends to organize leaderships, administration.

ICANN met exactly the same problems as we faced for what was the same job: IANA or lean ICANN. And their solution is not far, as a "dead hand" corporation (made illegal by the French Revolution because it was the common status of Abbeys as they also made corporations of the time illegal) and prograssively replaced them into this legal status at the end of the XIXth century (the law is unchanged since 1901).

It took us one day in 1978 to create SIAT, ten minutes in 1983 to make "SIAT/Intlnet", "SIAT/Eurolab" and "SIAT/Consulting" its name for its three main areas of concerns and influence. It takes may be one hour a year to produce a legal report. The financial management (very reduced) is the same as a familly budget and managed on Excel (it was first on my first basic program, then on Borland Spead sheet).

That structure never counted more than three or four coopted BoD Members and a very lose free Membership of up to 15 corporate, operators, and experts or may be 40 at times (we never really recorded them formally). The reason why is easy to understand: members of an e-community do not want to be tied in but served by a common structure. Loose cosortium style. Intlnet supported up to 70 international packet switch operators, managing for 9 years the father of the IANA file, participated into the ITU, conducted a project of a telematic city with three leading operators/manufacturers and local authorities, performed the first public testing between Minitel and US public services, supports Netowrk Users Operating Systems efforts for 15 years (MTX, Netix), proposed a modelization of the networks systems, is today engaged in various initiatives of importance ...

Today, and only today it considers if it could be of interest to bootstrap an Execom to adapt to the "culture" common law people try to work out, and they call "global network governance coordination" (with opposite meaning to our own understanding for each of these words). This means copynig the Californian structure of ICANN and of its constituencies.

I think it will not as we don't really see any advantage to it and we see many problems into this. We just work in supporting concertation (European meaing of the word). It works well.

Look at other examples of that: GAC Secretariat, look at GNSO, look at ccnSO.
jfc















At 17:32 03/07/03, DannyYounger@cs.com wrote:

Gilbert,

When this organization was formed the membership gave a very specific mandate
to those that would lead the organization. One element only in that mandate
was deemed of such a high priority that it was given a concrete timeline --
two months to draft a set of bylaws for membership ratification.

We have already suffered through the excuses of the last two panels. Enough
is enough. The bylaws are your top priority. Everything else is of secondary
importance. Get this work done, and get it done in the next two months. If
you didn't agree to the mandate of the membership, then you shouldn't have
stood for election.

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