On Thursday, Dec 19, 2002, at 06:12 America/Montreal, 'Stephane
Bortzmeyer' wrote:
Valdis did not suggest that we *forbid* people to work for companies
involved in the work of the WG they chair. Just that we ask them to
*disclose* such "potential conflicts of interest". (BTW, in the
present case, I do not think it has anything to do with a real
conflict of interest and everything to do with Bernstein's madness.)
To me, it is a very reasonable idea: it goes toward more transparency,
which is a good thing. The Internet is a big business now. We can no
longer assume that all IETF members are benevolent and disinterested
academics working only for the common good.
Disclaimer :-) I work for the French registry. We are members of the
BIND forum and therefore linked with ISC.
I agree with the notion that all folks in positions of perceived power
(e.g. IAB, IESG, WG Chairs, IRTF Chair) should be required to disclose
publicly
all of their relationships (e.g. employment, presence on other
Internet-related
positions such as board of a registry, technical advisory board
memberships,
and so forth) that might possibly be conflicts of interest. The goal
should be
to err on the side of too much disclosure, rather than too little.
Marshall Rose did a good job of this when on IESG, though unfortunately
his precedent has not often been followed.
Lack of such disclosure is currently a problem with the current
IETF/IESG/IAB structure. I'm not generally a fan of more process or
more
rules, but I think this one should be required not optional.
Ran
rja(_at_)extremenetworks(_dot_)com
PS: None of this is related to any claims by djb.
PPS: Practicing what I preach, I'll note that I work
for Extreme Networks and am on the TABs of NetVMG and STV.