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Re: Possible RFC 3683 PR-action

2008-03-25 12:09:56
Simon:

Since IETF does not vote, it is certainly not an issue here?

This is not totally true.  A WG Chair or Area Director cannot
judge rough consensus if they are unsure if the portion of the
population that is representing a dissenting view is one person
or many different people.  This is especially true when there
are a large number of silent observers.

Frankly, it strikes me as somewhat odd that a body acting as a
standards-setting organization with public impact might allow any
technical decision on its specifications to be driven by people
operating under a cloak of anonymity. Expressing an anonymous voice?
No problem. Influencing determination of a consensus with public
impact? That should not be allowed, IMO.

What if the pseudonymous voice raise a valid technical concern, provide
useful text for a specification, or even co-author a specification?

I think decisions should be based on technically sound arguments.
Whether someone wants to reveal their real identity is not necessarily
correlated to the same person providing useful contributions.

Raising a technical problem anonymously does not seem to be a 
concern.  However, there could be significant IPR problems with 
anonymous solutions to technical problems.

Russ 

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