IAB Response to an Appeal from J-F C. Morfin. On 29 November 2008 the IAB received an appeal from J-F C. Morfin, related to an earlier appeal from Mr Morfin to the IESG that the IESG rejected on 29 September 2008. Mr Morfin's appeal includes significant background material, as well as details of the original appeal to the IESG. In the section "Matter of the appeal", Mr Morfin appears to accept the IESG's decision in this specific case, and raises a number of points related to it. The IAB understands the relevant points to be these: 1. The IETF should be watching out for the good of the Internet, and when something comes up in that regard -- particularly related to interoperability -- it should supersede the charter of a Working Group or a decision of a WG chair or an Area Director. 2. Challenges to Working Group deliverables on interoperability grounds should never be considered off topic. 3. Some documents should have a "Precaution Considerations" section that discusses what precautions have been taken to "preserve present and future interoperabilities as well as users' requests". There does not appear to be anything in the IESG's response to Mr Morfin's original appeal that Mr Morfin is directly contesting. Further, the IAB, in reviewing that appeal, finds the IESG's response to be correct. Therefore, the IAB's direct response to this appeal is to support the IESG's earlier decision. Beyond that, the IAB considered Mr Morfin's points: The IAB considered Mr Morfin's allegation that IETF participants are unconcerned with the needs of end users, and found this allegation to be baseless and without merit. To the contrary, the needs of Internet users are very important to the IETF, to ensure the relevance of its output, and that importance is reflected in IETF processes and practice. The role of the IETF is to provide a venue for individuals working on networking hardware or software (whether commercial or free) to get together and agree on how those networking devices should interoperate to everyone's mutual benefit. That benefit would not be well served by ignoring the needs of users, and producing output that no one wants. The IAB considered Mr Morfin's allegation that IETF participants are insufficiently concerned with interoperability problems that may result from their work, and found this allegation to be baseless and without merit. Challenges to the quality and interoperability prospects of Working Group deliverables are taken seriously and are generally considered to be in scope when they are first raised. Once decisions are made -- usually by rough consensus -- raising the same issues repeatedly is not accepted. This is correct: the Working Group must make progress in its work, rather than spend its time revisiting old issues when there's nothing new added. In fact, in the case that prompted this appeal, Mr Morfin agrees that the upholding of the Working Group chair's decision was proper. The IAB considered Mr Morfin's allegation that IETF participants are unconcerned with supporting multilingual text and the needs of non-English-speaking network users around the world, and found this allegation to be baseless and without merit. IETF participants are actively working in areas related to multilingual text, enabling more multilingual use of the Internet. As to multilingual participation in the IETF: any organization doing the sort of work that the IETF does must have a lingua franca in which to work. Most engineering and scientific organizations use English as that language, and it seems best for the IETF to do so as well. It is our judgment that IETF participants generally do make a strong effort to understand those whose written or spoken English skills are imperfect. Being a worldwide organization, the IETF welcomes engineering contributions from individuals everywhere, both from native English speakers and from those for whom English is not the first language. The IAB considered Mr Morfin's allegation that end users are "banned" from IETF participation, and found this allegation to be baseless and without merit. The IETF is open to anyone who has access to email and makes the effort to participate and contribute, and the IETF welcomes and actively encourages participation from any individual who wishes to contribute in good faith. The IAB notes that making a worthwhile contribution does take effort. Showing up unprepared and espousing uninformed opinions takes little effort, but such behavior rarely amounts to a useful contribution. Similarly, repeatedly raising the same issues or pursuing a specific agenda that differs from that of the Working Group disrupts progress. To safeguard against such disruptive behavior, the IETF has procedures, outlined in RFC 3683, for banning a disruptive individual from posting to Working Group mailing lists, but this is uncommon, and has only happened twice since RFC 3683 was published in March 2004. For the IAB, --Olaf Kolkman, IAB Chair. _______________________________________________ IETF-Announce@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
