I have not been involved in the public discussion of the IETF
restructuring on this list so far, other than to make a plea at the most
recent IETF plenary in San Diego to consider the various issues that are
relevant to making any decisions about future restructuring. However, it
would appear that I now need to do so, this being a start, since many of
the issues that are so well known to others, have not yet been raised.
Some of the issues are straightforward, while others are not. Many can be
considered in a public forum; some are best handled between the parties
involved. I?ll address a few of them below.
There may well be good reasons for restructuring. The Internet has
undergone significant upheavals approximately every ten years or so since
its beginnings some thirty years ago. None of these have been without
their difficulties, but in the final analysis reasonable outcomes
occurred despite fears by many that such would not be the case. The
Internet would appear to be in a similar situation today.
The nations of the world have discovered the Internet in recent years and
have come to understand its importance to them moving forward. Yet, many
of them do not understand fully how the net works, or the processes by
which it evolves. This is partly an educational issue, and a high
priority one at that.
The Internet is challenged, more today than ever, to deal with a complex
set of issues surrounding its evolution and integration into all aspects
of society. Telephony, as well as media of all kinds, are now (or soon
will be) supported by the Internet and the integration of information
with communications services is accelerating. Many older distinctions
make little sense in this new world we have all helped to create, and
organizations that have not been involved in the past may now see the
need to do so. These organizations have structure, members and some
notion of turf, and increasingly the turf looks manifold, resembling a
Riemannian surface.
The role of the IETF has been critical to the Internet?s evolutionary
process. Yet it should not be taken for granted. Much effort has been
spent by many dedicated individuals over many years to make it an
effective body. Professional stewardship of this ship of state, as well
as oversight of the process in the public interest, will be increasingly
important in the future.
In this spirit, the following insights are proffered:
- The IETF Secretariat was created by CNRI in the late 1980s to help
support the IETF as we now know it. For the first ten years or so, the
actual work was done by CNRI under a Cooperative Agreement with the US
Government. In 1998, the provision of support services was moved to
Foretec Seminars, a for-profit company that was formed by CNRI to support
seminars, workshops and conferences, and which would provide secretariat
services for the IETF under contract to CNRI in much the same fashion
that CNRI had provided them in the past.
- Since the outset, CNRI has supported the IETF by raising funds,
providing some of the support itself, and by providing the financial
underpinnings in both good and bad times. The initial PI on this effort
was Vint Cerf.
- CNRI helped to form ISOC and was one of the three charter members of
ISOC. CNRI provided funding to help ISOC get started, and after ISOC was
incorporated in December 1992, CNRI provided secretariat services to ISOC
for several years.
- In 1993, CNRI made arrangements for ISOC to move into its own
quarters nearby CNRI. This was motivated at the time by a need to provide
a physical separation between the IETF Secretariat and the activities of
ISOC.
- An MOA was developed by CNRI, ISOC, and coordinated with the IAB and
IETF Chairs in the 1996 ? 1998 time frame. CNRI understood the MOA to
have been agreed upon by the parties, and has been operating within the
spirit of it since then.
- In recent years, demands on Foretec for IETF services have increased;
but there have been no effective means of applying back pressure, i.e. a
change management process that addresses cost recovery for additional
services. This is an issue that needs to be resolved.
- I have publicly stated CNRI?s willingness to support the IETF in
their restructuring efforts. We expect to do our part, but due to some of
the legalities involved, this is a matter than cannot be fully worked out
in a public forum.
- CNRI takes seriously the fiduciary responsibility entrusted to it to
insure the continued well-being of the IETF, operating in the public
interest, which we accepted, on behalf of the community that we helped to
form, many years ago. While we do not seek to retain this, neither can we
or should we simply walk away from it irresponsibly. In many ways, our
primary responsibility over time has been to help ensure the public
interest is well served by the Internet standards process; this
responsibility needs to be preserved throughout any of the organizational
structures that support it.
- Earlier this year, I provided suggestions regarding issues that were
essential to work out for insuring the healthy provision of secretariat
services given limited resources and potentially unlimited demand. These
suggestions involved developing a process for understanding the annual
needs of the IETF, translating it into a budget to support it, raising
funds to supplement meeting fees, developing procedures for staying
within the bounds of available resources, and for negotiating changes in
the provision of resources and funding. This area has not yet been
addressed, yet it remains critical to do regardless of the restructuring
approach for IETF itself.
- Finally, there are many other issues that will affect the
decision-making processes here, which can only be sorted out among the
involved parties. Some of these are legal, some contractual, some
financial, and some even institutional. I believe the most pressing issue
is largely about managing the provision of secretariat services to the
IETF. While discussions about organizational change have been ongoing for
a while, a thoughtful approach to restructuring was recently put forth by
Patrice Lyons as an Internet Draft
(draft-lyons-proposed-changes-statement-01.txt), and should be carefully
considered by the IETF. I hope to weigh in on some of the open issues in
future comments on this mailing list.
R.E. Kahn
11-9-04
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