Re: Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and employment statu

I am not at all sure it helps.

Remember that from time to time we see 'drive by' campaigns
originating from the FSF which amount to nothing more than someone has
said something to RMS that has set him off on a rant and told his
minions to fire off objections.

So the objections clearly have a single source, but the objectors have
different employers. If the rants were not so ill-informed, they might
well be influential.

IETF process does make it very easy to block a proposal. If what the
entity attempting to pack a meeting is doing is trying to block
something, it is not difficult for them to win if they are blocking in
the WG itself.

Another area where we do have difficulty is where there is a proposal
that is by intention designed to damage the interests of some party.
For example, spam reduction measures. If you have a genuinely open
consensus process then the spammers have an input to the process as
well.


On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 7:02 PM, Fred Baker <fred(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> wrote:
> From my perspective...
> We really want to think of IETF participants as individuals. As Brian says,
> it is a useful fiction, which allows all sorts of things to be bypassed. I
> would be truly disappointed if someone I was collaborating with on a draft
> or was working on a working group with me fundamentally changed their
> opinion as they changed employers; I would wonder if they were lying to me
> before the change or after.
> The reason we note affiliations, however, at least in my very humble
> opinion, is for situational awareness. If someone does try to stack a
> committee or "stuff the ballot box", which has happened, it would be nice to
> have the information to notice it. Beyond that, it's a
> potentially-interesting but otherwise useless factoid.
>
> On Apr 8, 2010, at 12:08 PM, Donald Eastlake wrote:
>
> On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 7:14 AM, Roni Even 
> <ron(_dot_)even(_dot_)tlv(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
> > If this is true it make me wonder why does the IETF care about the
> > affiliation of WG chairs and ADs
> >
> > Roni Even
> The reason traditionally given that IETF participants in general give their
> affiliation is for purposes of individual identification.
> The reason there is concern about too many people with the same affiliation
> in positions where they judge consensus or the like is to avoid situations
> where the organization with which they are affiliated would appear to or
> would have the possibility to dominate.
> The only hard and fast rules about this in the IETF that I know about are
> that nomcom volunteers are required to give their affiliation and no more
> than two voting nomcom members can have the same affiliation. Whether this
> rule is good or bad is a matter of judgement but it was adopted after
> multiple cases where more than two randomly selected voting nomcom members
> had the same affiliation and some people felt this created the impression of
> dominance.
> Thanks,
> Donald
>
> > From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org 
> > [mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of
> > Mark Atwood
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 7:17 PM
> > To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
> > Subject: Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and employment
> > status
> >
> >
> >
> > Much of what makes the IETF work is how it is very different from other
> > standards bodies (such as IEEE, ANSI, ISO, NIST, ITU, etc etc).
> >
> >
> >
> > One key difference is that "groups" do not join the IETF.
> >
> >
> >
> > Cisco, IBM, MCI, or Linden Lab are not a "members" of the IETF.  No agency
> > of the US government, or of any other government, is a "member" of the IETF.
> >  No university, non-profit, PIRG, PAC, or other "concerned citizens group",
> > is a "member" of the IETF.
> >
> >
> >
> > Only individual people can be "members" of the IETF.  And "membership" is
> > mostly defined as "who shows up on the mailing list" and "who shows up at
> > the meetings".
> >
> >
> >
> > There have been many cases in the history of the IETF where well known
> > members who are in the middle of writing standards or of chairing various
> > important working groups, who have worked for well-known large companies,
> > will change employers, to other companies, to startups, or to personal
> > sabbaticals switch around between industry, academia, research, and
> > government, and this will not, does not, and should not, affect their
> > position inside the IETF at all.
> >
> >
> >
> > It appears that sometimes people, inside and outside of the IETF, need to
> > be reminded of this.
> >
> >
> >
> > If you want to write standards like the IEEE and ITU do it, you know where
> > you can find them.
> >
> >
> >
> > But when you choose to participate in the IETF process, that is how it
> > works.
> >
> >
> >
> > And if someone feels that anyone's change in employment status should
> > affect their standing in any part of the IETF process, that person has
> > missed the point, and needs to be pointedly reminded of their mistake.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ietf mailing list
> > Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
> > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
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