'Paywall, ' IETF self-sufficiency, increasing participation (was Re: Rem

Mea culpa!

My fault for not being articulate. I was responding to the discussion thread, 
and happened to chose this one to staple the reply to. I in no way meant to 
infer that Ted (or Dave or anyone else) was advocating that the IETF should be 
excluding people. In this case, the impression (which Ted pointed out to me) 
was that I was saying that he wanted to exclude people based on ability to pay. 
Ted and I discussed this off-list, and we are in violent agreement. I did not 
think he was advocating for that, and I do not want anyone to advocate for that.

Moving forward, what I was hoping to avoid was for people to think that because 
the IETF conference fees defer the costs of operating the IETF (the meeting 
itself, the secretariat, and a portion of the RFC Editor), that we have to try 
to squeeze every penny from all sources. That is not necessarily a bad mindset 
to have: we should be striving to be independent on the largesse of the 
Internet Society and their contributors if we can manage it. That is not an 
infinite pot of cash, and no one wants to be beholden to a single funding 
source. However, what I wanted to get out to the community is the message that 
the Internet Society believes deeply in expanding access to the IETF and the 
IETF process. If charging for remote access inhibits participation (the 
unfortunate ‘paywall’ comment), then I would have no problem at all suggesting 
the IETF (IAOC in specific) ask the Internet Society to fund remote 
participation. I think the Board (speaking as an individual, NOT in my role as!
  an Internet Society Trustee) would treat such a request sympathetically.

I can see this could be a dynamic situation. I can envision a time when we as 
the IETF are truly successful and develop fantastic real-time communication 
protocols that are easy to deploy, cost almost nothing, and are secure. At that 
point, one would *hope* in-person IETF meetings become a relic of history. 
Maybe we would meet once per year or every other year to reminisce about how 
the only way to get work done was to spend thousands of dollars of cash per 
year and an uncountable amount of cost for travel time to physically meet in 
the same location. How 20th Century! At that point, I would expect surpluses 
from meeting fees would be nonexistent, and we would need to figure alternate 
means of funding. However, that day seems to be far enough away that charging 
for remote participation should be a remote possibility for the foreseeable 
future.

> On Feb 24, 2015, at 9:24 PM, Ted Lemon 
> <Ted(_dot_)Lemon(_at_)nominum(_dot_)com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 24, 2015, at 8:32 PM, Eric Burger 
> <eburger(_at_)standardstrack(_dot_)com> wrote:
> > The last thing we need as we are just beginning to have success reaching out 
> > beyond North American, European, Japanese, S. Korean, and Australian 
> > mid-size to large corporations is to toss up a paywall, some as much as a 
> > month’s salary or more, for the ‘privilege’ of contributing to the IETF.
> You know, it's really frustrating when you participate in a discussion, try 
> to contribute helpfully, and then essentially get accused of being a 
> blithering idiot by someone who didn't bother to consider the possibility 
> that you might not be.   I'm sure you've had that experience too.   Heck, 
> I've been the one who assumed the other person was an idiot too, so I can 
> relate.
>
> Anyway, if you think I was proposing a paywall, please go back and re-read 
> what I actually wrote, and the rest of the discussion that followed, with the 
> presumption in mind that I did _not_ mean to propose any such thing (because 
> I didn't!), and see if the discussion still works, or if you find something I 
> or someone else said that contradicts that assumption.
>
> Thanks.