Hi David,

Perhaps I can provide some helpful context.

From very early in the transition proposal development process, the ICG has been encouraging all interested parties to engage in the operational community discussions as early as possible. This is stated in the RFP we released nearly a year ago, in September 2014. [1]

The numbers proposal was submitted to the ICG in January. It has not changed since then. The ICG analyzed it on its own as well as in conjunction with the other two operational community proposals. The ICG asked the numbers community some follow-up questions, including about IANA-related IPR, but none of those resulted in any changes to the numbers proposal.

Based on the submissions the ICG received from the other two communities and a follow-up exchange the ICG had with the CWG, the ICG has concluded as follows (paragraph 34-35 in the transition proposal that is now out for public comment):

"

  1. The ICG identified a potential compatibility issue regarding the IANA trademarks and the iana.org domain name. The numbers community proposed that the trademarks and domain name associated with the provision of the IANA services be held by an entity that is not the provider of the IANA numbering services, the IETF Trust being suggested as the repository. Although the protocol parameters proposal did not speak to this issue, in response to an ICG inquiry the protocol parameters community indicated that it had no objection to the IETF Trust serving as the repository for the trademarks and domain name associated with the provision of the IANA services.

  2. 35  The names proposal contains text that refers to the trademark in Annex S. In response to an ICG inquiry about the text, the CWG indicated that the text is clearly defined as placeholder text (in square brackets) within an initial draft proposed term sheet that does not have the consensus support of the CWG. In effect, the names proposal does not make a specific proposal with regard to the IANA trademarks (and it is completely silent as regards the domain name). Thus, the ICG considers the three proposals to be compatible in this regard, as the numbers proposal is the only one of the three proposals that includes requirements related to IANA intellectual property. As long as the other two communities can accommodate the specified requirements as part of their implementation, then the implementation of the proposals will be compatible. The ICG expects the operational communities to continue to coordinate on this topic during the implementation phase to ensure that the requirements are met. 

In short, the proposals are compatible because only one of them states a position on the issue at hand.

At present, the transition proposal is out for public comment. While the ICG has requested that commenters focus on specific questions about the proposal as a whole [2], some commenters may choose to comment on details of the individual operational community proposals. Although the numbers proposal has been stable for many months, if you believe any aspect of any of the proposals is unworkable, submitting a public comment would be one option for you to express your concerns. However, as noted in the text quoted above and as is my understanding of what happened on the CWG call today, it might be preferable to see what the outcome of the ongoing coordination between the communities is first. And if you or anyone requires clarification about the rationales behind or anticipated implementation of the numbers portion of the proposal, I would encourage you to send mail to ianaxfer@nro.net.

Best,
Alissa

[1] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/rfp-iana-stewardship-08sep14-en.pdf
[2] https://www.ianacg.org/calls-for-input/combined-proposal-public-comment-period/#callforcomment

On Aug 6, 2015, at 8:04 AM, David Conrad <david.conrad@icann.org> wrote:

Apologies: I left off the disclaimer that appears to be essential in discussions on this list.

On Aug 6, 2015, at 7:40 AM, David Conrad <david.conrad@icann.org> wrote:

Andrew,

The proposal was developed in public some time ago (and rather a long
time, in this context).  We all of us had ample time to raise
objections to that and so on, and we knew that the ICG was going to
take the different community positions and try to stitch them
together.

Well, yes. However, if the basis of an aspect of a proposal doesn't appear
to make sense and that that problem isn't identified until after people
have time to sit down and actually think about stuff, it seems a bit odd
to me to say "oh well, you had your chance to fix it months ago."  It's
sort of like someone identifying a problem in an Internet Draft in IETF
last call and the working group saying "sorry, you should've said
something during the working group session a year ago."

CWG (and IETF, for that matter) declined to state anything
inconsistent with the numbes community proposal when delivering its
proposal, so the numbers community proposal is what we have.

This seems to be an interesting interpretation of "stitch together".  An
alternative interpretation would be that the ICG would actively work with
the operational communities to modify the inconsistencies in order to
reach a consensus opinion, not simply be passive and kick everything back
to the operational communities to start over as you appear to be
suggesting.

Regards,
-drc
(ICANN CTO, but speaking only for myself)

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