John you were not the "sole network operator" on the directorate.[1] https://www.sobco.com/ipng/directorate.minutes/bigten.5.19.94

Eliot -

You are referencing the minutes of a rather large workshop (the Big10 confab) that had far more attendees that the IPng Directorate itself.

The list of directorate members is contained in RFC 1752 "The Recommendation for the IP Next Generation Protocol” in Appendix B, and is listed below for reference –

Appendix B - IPng Area Directorate

   J. Allard - Microsoft           <jallard@microsoft.com>
   Steve Bellovin  - AT&T          <smb@research.att.com>
   Jim Bound  - Digital            <bound@zk3.dec.com>
   Ross Callon  - Wellfleet        <rcallon@wellfleet.com>
   Brian Carpenter  - CERN         <brian.carpenter@cern.ch>
   Dave Clark  - MIT               <ddc@lcs.mit.edu >
   John Curran  - NEARNET          <curran@nic.near.net>
   Steve Deering  - Xerox          <deering@parc.xerox.com>
   Dino Farinacci  - Cisco         <dino@cisco.com>
   Paul Francis - NTT              <francis@slab.ntt.jp>
   Eric Fleischmann  - Boeing      <ericf@atc.boeing.com>
   Mark Knopper - Ameritech        <mak@aads.com>
   Greg Minshall  - Novell         <minshall@wc.novell.com>
   Rob Ullmann - Lotus             <ariel@world.std.com>
   Lixia Zhang  - Xerox            <lixia@parc.xerox.com>

And I'm not saying that there weren't arguments, but I am saying that nobody said, “wait for something better.” Rather, everyone was arguing for their preferred approach out of the ones I mentioned.

Also incorrect. The preferred transition approached of the recommended IPng candidate (SIPP) was IPAE, and that was actually dead-on-arrival.   Per the same recommendation RFC -

   The biggest problem the reviewers had with SIPP was with IPAE, SIPP's
   transition plan.  The overwhelming feeling was that IPAE is fatally
   flawed and could not be made to work reliably in an operational
   Internet.

This is what lead to the conception of the infamous Simple SIPP Transition (SST) approach as a stand-in Transition plan in order to allow for a decision to be made – and creation of IETF working groups to develop the respective transition mechanisms.  At the time of the IPng decision there was actually _no_ “transition plan” – as the very mechanisms that were to be used (and that were eventually discarded as unworkable) were just placeholders for future IETF work. 

Thanks,
/John

p.s. My views alone.  Warning: contents may be hot / burn hazard