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

Thanks. IMHO participants  in IETF are in two categories: individuals and
companies, both needs to have diversity. I think IETF has shortage in
remote participants and in diversity, so the strategy is that no fees
because IETF needs more diversity.

However, the issue in my thoughts is not remote or non-remote or ability to
pay or not (diversity items), but the issue can be about benefits, cost and
payment return/outcome. For example, usually remote participants attend but
the outcome is less than others. In business and organisation what matters
is utilization of time, money, and attendance. People in business meet for
many reasons and different methods. All IETF participants attending meeting
physically have different utilization but pay the same fee. I think that
makes limited attendance. Now days Internet services changing to you pay
for what you use only, so could IETF offer that?

Let us focus on participant outcome (individual or organisation) from the
IETF meeting and then think about the fees to be added or increased per
category. IETF may need to look into that to manage participants'
satisfactions and expectations. I think companies that use and benefit from
IETF services should not be treated similar to individual participant. I
suggest that companies participating (i.e. company name is written in the
WG draft) should/may pay fees specific for that session utilization of
IETF.

AB

IETF Participant from Africa

On Wednesday, February 25, 2015, Eric Burger 
<eburger-l(_at_)standardstrack(_dot_)com>
wrote:

> 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
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > On Feb 24, 2015, at 8:32 PM, Eric Burger 
> > <eburger(_at_)standardstrack(_dot_)com
> <javascript:;>> 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.