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Re: Sponsorship (was Re: IETF Meetings - High Registration Fees)

2002-03-18 20:10:03
I'm not sure what they do now, but I
know that I've seen dicussions on freebsd lists and others where people are
discussing how to implement certain features into some somewhere, where the
conclusion is whoever wrote the RFC should be shot.

The main problem right now though may be one of perception - I've been to 
BSD conferences that have cost not dissimilar amounts to IETF confs, but 
with more of a social slant. I'm sure that some of the implementors in OSS 
world would pull together the money *somehow* to get to IETF if there was a 
perceived value.

But in the scenarios you allude to, pretty much *all* of the work to
address those problems should have been handled on the WG mailing
list.  Also, standards do not get approved at IETF meetings (referring
to your "rubber stamped by Cisco" comments), so there's no need to
show up to "vote" for your favourite protocol.

Being practical, you only *need* to attend a meeting if there is an
intractable problem in front of a WG you're actively participating in,
and solving that problem requires a face-to-face session.  Some people
claim you have to attend to keep up with what the other groups are
doing.  I think this is an artifact of the use of mailing lists for WG
traffic: it's just not practical to follow all the mailing lists.  (I
sure don't.)  A possible solution would be to feed all of the WG lists
into a read-only IMAP (and NNTP) server, making it easier to browse a
wider cross section of lists without completely obliterating your
inbox (and before you say it, MUA filtering doesn't properly address
the problem).

Don't forget, there are active IETF participants who have never felt
it necessary to attend a meeting.  And frankly, if people would stop
showing up when they don't have to the cost of the meetings (and the
registration fees) would be a lot lower. (Thus repeating the
cycle....)

--lyndon



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