Moreover, English centric IETF meetings are hard to be actively
attended by people whose primary language is not English. Compared
to other International organizations, IETF requires too much in
English capability. Worse, in IETF, inactive participation is
nothing.
It wouuld be possible to have all the mailing lists redistributed
using some babelfish-like mechanism for translation, though obviously that
wouldn't cover all languages and wouldn't do any well. Maybe better than
nothing.
Reality is there has to be a standard language unless you have the
vast resources of the UN. While I can fully understand why the rest of the
world wouldn't be happy with English as the choice for that language, there
isn't really any fundamental reason why it shouldn't be English.
Austin