Since it has come to pass that the IETF can no longer support
itself by its current methods of funding, the question of how it is to be
funded in the future has been raised. In all likelihood many realize the
importance of this question, it is also probable that many do not and so, I
will share my views on the subject.
An organization is defined in no small part by the entities which
support its existence, both with their time and, monetarily. No matter what
the original intent, whoever provides funding for the IETF will gain some
control over us. Even if the control aspect could be avoided somehow, there
will be an association between the IETF and whomever provides its funding. For
the future stability of the IETF, we need to ensure that any association we
consider will be a positive one.
The possibility of corporate sponsorship has been suggested. If a
corporation is willing to provide a meeting site, I see no reason to refuse
however, direct funding by a corporation, or a group of corporations would have
consequences we do not wish to bear. The IETF is not an industry consortium,
and much of our integrity comes from the fact that we operate outside corporate
and governmental structure. Our mission is to create standards for the
Internet in general, not geared towards anybody in particular. I do not see
how we could do this without bias while accepting funding from an entity that
does not necessarily share this goal.
We do, however, need to address this issue. If the IETF chair
thinks we are in financial trouble, we need to do something about it. While
increasing the meeting fees or cutting back on certain things would definitely
improve the situation, I am not sure it would work in the long term, as it
relies upon a minimum attendance of the meetings, and it is definitely
foreseeable that non-meeting expenses could grow at a rate that does not
correlate with meeting attendance. In the interest of generating discussion on
non-obvious methods we could use to fund ourselves, I have included a few
ideas.
One idea is to ask the Regional Internet Registries if they would
consider adding a small fee to IP address block leases to help support the
IETF. The work of the IETF is critical to the Internet and, this would be a
way to extract funding for our continuing work from those who benefit the most,
namely anybody who uses the Internet. Using this method, the meetings should
fund themselves, while a small fee on each address could pay for the other
workings of the IETF. This would have the benefits of both keeping us
independent and, ensuring that we continue to have the funding necessary to
operate. If this becomes a reality we would obviously need to take care that
our expenses do not get out of hand.
Another option, which we should consider, is associating with the
United Nations. It could be said that we share many goals with the United
Nations and, they are in a unique position to provide many benefits. They
could provide places to hold meetings as well as ensure that visas are granted
for those who wish to attend. Funding would likely not be much of an issue for
them, as the IETF is not an expensive organization. Another benefit of the
United Nations is that they could provide a degree of protection and isolation
from the workings of government and industry which, while it may not seem
important now, is becoming more of an issue as the internet grows in importance
and therefore, becomes something which governments and large industries have an
increasing desire to control. We would have to work out an agreement to be
sure that we can operate with autonomy, but this should be well within our
abilities. While we may not be ready to do this now, the United Nations is
definitely worthy of consideration. Perhaps joining the United Nations as a
Non Government Organization to provide a trial period for us to assess the
benefits and limitations of this action is something we should do in the
interim.
There are many other ideas that deserve consideration such as
simply asking people for money. I do not particularly care for this idea
however, if all else fails, we should at least see if it would be viable for
the IETF. Another possibility is to charge a membership fee, although I do not
know how much more of a burden we wish to place upon members of the IETF who
are already donating their time. Perhaps we could sell hardcopies of RFCs,
although I do not know how many people would buy them, especially since a copy
can be obtained free of charge online. The list of possibilities is extremely
long.
There are many ways in which we could generate the funding
necessary to the IETF, and I encourage anyone with an idea they think is viable
to share it. I do wish to ask that we consider the implications of any method
we choose. We should be very careful during this process not to choose a
method of funding that compromises our autonomy or, which would be seen as such
by others. If we are going to expend significant effort on this problem, we
should also try to ensure that the method of funding we choose is stable, as we
do not want it to be a recurring theme of the IETF that we are looking for
money.
- Daniel Pelstring