This is what I mean by slippery slope - once we go down this path it never ends
- in a global community of well over 1000 active people at least one person is
likely to have a problem with some aspect of most of the countries governments,
policies, cultures or actions, etc.
We could be left with the only possible venue being a cruise ship sailing in
international waters - but then someone will probably object because the ship
is registered in Panama or Liberia!
The focus should be on choosing a location for the meeting that is open for all
to attend and where it is reasonably safe to attend and meets the needs of a
meeting for a large number of people and represents the regional balance of the
membership.
The mission of the IETF is to make the Internet work better by producing high
quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design,
use, and manage the Internet.
The IETF is not an organization that's mission is to be an advocate for global
social, environmental or political change. The selection of a meeting location
should be for the purposes of advancing the IETF's mission. I think some of the
concerns raised about Singapore need to be addressed in terms of the practical
impact and risk to the attendance of some in the IETF community but we
shouldn’t start down the road of choosing or not choosing meeting locations
based on an evaluation of a countries laws, culture and policies and whether
those are acceptable to all or most of the community.
Debates over whether a location is politically or morally acceptable will only
distract from the mission of the IETF and likely divide the community rather
than help in making progress towards forming consensus on the future
development of the internet.
Andrew
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf [mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of Vinayak Hegde
Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2016 10:24 PM
To: chopps(_at_)chopps(_dot_)org
Cc: IETF discussion list <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Subject: Re: Concerns about Singapore
On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 6:46 AM, <chopps(_at_)chopps(_dot_)org> wrote:
It's certainly relevant to me, b/c I don't personally think that IETF
meetings should be held in oppressive and censoring countries. I don't
know how to articulate this well -- others are better at it -- but I
certainly would like to skip any meetings that I feel violate IETFs
value of openness so that I can at least vote with my feet and my
dollars.
Well how does this work with Internet's (and IETF's) mission of inclusiveness.
Applying the same scale of "oppressiveness", I am sure large parts of the world
think the same about the US/UK which has waged wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Vietnam, Syria, Argentina (our latest venue) and elsewhere.
The IETF doesn't seem to have a problem having meetings in these countries. I
hope the majority of participants on this list realise that they are viewing
the world through a western prism.
The notion of punishing the general populace for the mistakes of their elected
and unelected govt. seems wrong to me. Many times, the general populace of the
country is fighting their govt. through the Internet. eg. Turkey.
-- Vinayak