On Thu, 2012-08-02 at 16:58 -0400, Worley, Dale R (Dale) wrote:
From: Murray S. Kucherawy [superuser(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com]
I think it's impossible to determine with certainty whether someone
standing at the mic and asserting a position is doing so based on what
an employer is insisting on doing, or that person's opinion.
But it is possible, over a period of time, to get a good estimate of
whether someone promotes technically poor solutions that are
commercially advantageous for their employers.
Yes; those people generally (but not always) have fairly poor success
rates; OTOH, a lot of nonsense can be accomplished
with sufficient manpower.
Indeed, relative to our fundamental principle of openness, "All may
speak; not all are listened to.", in order to be listened to, someone
has to spend some time to establish a reputation for technical quality
of their contributions, and not being a shill for poor ideas advanced
by their employers.
I suppose that that may be one reason why my experiences with corporate
manipulation (or domination, if you prefer) of the IETF have been of
people with those very reputations blocking good ideas that threatened
the interests of their employer. It's pretty hard to get things done
in the IETF,
but quite easy to stop things, especially if one is in a position of
power.
Dale