--On Saturday, 19 April, 2014 10:08 -0700
ned+ietf(_at_)mauve(_dot_)mrochek(_dot_)com wrote:
...
there as a potential for the appearance of conflicts of
interest. Those conflicts need not be of the traditional
legal or financial variety. They can occur (or be perceived
to occur) when someone's institutional or organizational
relationships outside the IETF might lead people to suspect
that review and decision-making might not be as careful,
unbiased, or primarily reflective of the interest of the IETF
or the broader Internet community as we would like it to
assume it always is. For situations where troublesome
relationships exist or might be inferred (even by those
suffering from mild paranoid), we need to get much more
careful about disclosure of the relationships involved.
Good point, and I agree.
These waters are going to be difficult to nagivate, but I
don't see any alternative.
Yes. However, I see some parallel to the IPR situation. We
could presumably treat members of the community like adults (I
think almost all are) and say "if you have an outside-the-IETF
relationship to the developers, or developing organization, of a
spec, you must at least disclose it", it would go a long way
and, IMO, not be particularly difficult. Unlike the IPR
situation, this one is unlikely to require involving lawyers in
what one could or could not say/ disclose. The waters get
difficult only if we feel a need to take the next steps toward
forced recusal or worse. Maybe, if we just demanded disclosure
as an expected professional courtesy and act of honesty toward
the rest of the community and understood that either an
undisclosed conflict or a disclosed one that seemed to distort a
decision could be reasonable grounds for appeals, we could get
away without a requirement for a lot of hair-splitting rules.
john