I had a brief chat with Stephan and Fred privately on a variant of this...
I happen to chair three working groups, and my concern with Stephan's
scenario was not that someone (to use Hadriel's example) goes to work for an
SBC vendor and is now seeing protocol traces from deployed networks that
change "the right answer" from proposal A to proposal B.
I know that when I went to work for a network monitor system vendor, I saw
lots of protocol traces that were amazing - that part makes perfect sense to
me.
My concern as chair was trying to evaluate technical inputs like
- "I used to back proposal A, but
- after my employment change, I suddenly know reasons why proposal B is
better, but
- I can't share those reasons with you, because the information is
proprietary to my new employer"
My experience with appeals to technical information not in evidence has been
that the IETF does not respond well to those appeals.
As recently as yesterday, Hadriel told me "I can't say much about that,
because we're not under NDA, *but what I can tell you is ...*". I think what
I'm reacting to, is what Bernard Aboba (in this case) and I would need to do
as chairs, if Hadriel had said "I can't say much about that, because the
information is proprietary, but I was wrong before and now I'm right". At a
minimum, I'd HOPE that any declaration of working group consensus based on
participants who can't tell us why the consensus is technically correct,
would be appealed.
If I'm misunderstanding Stephan's scenario, I apologize, and look forward to
better understanding your point of view.
Thanks,
Spencer
----- Original Message -----
From: Fred Baker
To: Hadriel Kaplan
Cc: Mark Atwood ; ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 3:00 AM
Subject: Re: Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and
employmentstatus
Please don't understand me to say that employment doesn't affect views. Time
affects views, life affects views, and yes employment affects views. What I
was referring to was a sudden change, indicative of toeing a line. I would
have a problem with someone that had told me he thought one thing suddenly
thinking another and not being able to explain the switch in terms other
than "that's my new employer's position".
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