--On Sunday, March 30, 2008 9:00 PM -0700 Doug Ewell
<doug(_at_)ewellic(_dot_)org> wrote:
Theodore Tso <tytso at MIT dot EDU> wrote:
A valid technical concern is easy to deal with. If they
provide an idea, I suspect a cautious working group chair
might insist on knowing their real name and company
affiliation, since there have been past examples where
companies have tried to inject patented technologies into a
standards specification.
I suppose a few personal notes might be in order regarding
"company affiliation," since I've served as editor for both
RFC 4645 and draft-ietf-ltru-4645bis, both products of the
LTRU Working Group that started this thread, and both under
the title "Consultant" instead of a company or other
organizational affiliation.
There are a couple of reasons. One is that my company, which
had apparently been embarrassed by employees posting personal
opinions on an industry message board in a way which made
them sound like official company positions, instituted a set
of "Internet and Electronic Communications Guidelines" some
years ago which prohibits employees from "stating their
[company] affiliation over the Internet" unless required as
part of their job description.
...
Doug,
Even this stringent a rule would presumably not prevent you from
disclosing your affiliation to a WG Chair or the Secretariat if
you were asked a specific question in order to help authenticate
you. If it is possible to read our rules to prevent the
entities who might legitimately ask you for that information
from keeping it confidential if that were reasonably required,
then those rules may need clarification or tweaking.
But there is a huge difference between stating/ advertising a
company affiliation in a mailing list email address or at the
top of an RFC and responding to the sort of query that I think
Ted's note suggests.
john
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