On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 11:44:50AM +0000, Paul Robinson wrote:
2. Individual participation will increase, and therefore the quality of the
protocols, rafts and RFCs will increase. Would the IETF rather be pushing
through some standard that one manufacturer really wants for their new
router line-up, or input on a broad range of protocols from the people who
maintain the network protocol stacks in Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/etc.
with the emphasis being on open, secure, reliable systems?
1) Individual participation can always take place on mailing lists. I
will note that a lot of the development work for Linux, FreeBSD,
NetBSD, GNOME, etc., happens on mailing lists, and in fact the Open
Source people are probably *more* used to collaborating electronically
than many people in the commercial/propietary industry space. And as
always, while the face to face contact is important, on the IETF, the
primary place place where things get done is the mailing list --- not
in the face-to-face meetings.
2) Given that the overall cost of a meeting is at around $2000 (and
this doesn't even include the cost of the time of the person who is
attending the meeting), once you include airfare, hotel, and meals,
and the registration fee, would you really increase individual
participation by decreasing the registration fee from $425 to say
$150? I very much doubt it. Someone who can't afford $2000, probably
also won't be able to afford $1500. If you include the
salary+overhead cost of the engineer attending the meeting, the cost
of the registration really disappears into the noise.
OK, I'm biased, I'm with the OSS guys, but surely somebody can see my point.
It's not about trying to push away the corporates, it's about trying to
create a level playing field. I, for one, completely agree with adopting a
tiering system.
A level playing field is one where everyone pays the same amount of
money for the value of services received. Also, I'll note that given
that individuals who don't attend the meetings, but who still
participate electronically, are basically getting the IETF Secretariat
services "for free", companies who send lots of people are in effect
already subsidizing the smaller companies who don't send as many
people.
- Ted
P.S. I am a Linux kernel developer, and very much in the Open Source
Software development space, and you'll notice that I'm not pushing for
an organizational subsidy....