On 7/9/2013 2:07 PM, Ted Lemon wrote:
On Jul 9, 2013, at 4:58 PM, Scott Brim <scott(_dot_)brim(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>
wrote:
Is the great majority of the wisdom in the IETF incorporated into
a few megacorporations?
(That might reflect market share, in which case, is it a problem?)
I don't know the answer to that question, but it's an interesting
question. But the reason I reacted to John Klensin's message
earlier the way I did is that I think that the question of how biased
toward the company's goals a nomcom participant will be has a lot to
do with the individual candidate.
Yes it does, but unfortunately that is irrelevant.
The concept of conflict of interest is not concerned with whether an
individual's behavior is problematic, but whether there is an inherent
tension amongst different interests for the person. In other words,
it's about the situational potential, not personal integrity.
There are two ways to deal with conflict of interest.
The first is to prohibit it. If a person has competing situational
influences, they are excluded.
In many environments -- and especially ones with industry participants
doing industry work, like a standards body -- it is not possible to
create a 'neutral' situation. So the alternative is to 'balance' things
through diversity, ensuring that the situational forces pull in many
different directions. (Actually, this also means we ought to mean we
limit the number of router vendors or MTA vendors or... in positions of
control for individual committees.)
And large companies do seem to
tend to snap up long-time influential IETF participants, so indeed it
is likely that over time IETF knowledge will tend to concentrate in
one large company or another.
Trends towards industry concentration are a long-standing challenge. To
the extent that the IETF wishes to continue to be inclusive, diversity
pressures means it needs to limit the /ability/ of the giants to dominate.
Again, it has nothing to do with the motives or style of any of the
giants. It has to due with a requirement that others are assured equal
opportunity to participate and influence.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net