On Wed, 18 Dec 2002 14:14:16 PST, Bill Strahm said:
> I hope EVERYONE deeply involved in a WG documentation process has deep
> DEEP conflict of interest problems. I mean if we are not working on the
> things we are documenting, how will we know if they work or not.
Quite true. And I believe I said I'd be surprised if the WG chair didn't
make money at it....
> Saying
> that WG chairs can not work for companies that need the efforts of the
> WG seems like setting up a big failure, there are checks and balances,
> you don't like what the chairs of a WG are doing, talk to the ADs, don't
I think that's what I did - if the AD or IESG says "We talked to Olafur and
there's nothing major" I'll be happy. I'd even be OK with it if he had the
prospect of a $400K consulting contract if the draft goes a certain way - we've
certainly seen companies like Cisco have literally millions riding on a given
RFC, but it's rare that such information isn't known. I know when MIME and
ESMTP were being designed, everybody in the working group knew who had MUAs and
MTAs in the pipe, and they were usually quite clear on exactly how much a given
WG decision was going to cost in redesign/recoding.
I don't even see the need for a formal public disclosure process - but djb
*did* raise the point on the main IETF list, where probably most of the readers
*dont* know Olafur's situation, so at least *some* response is probably called
for.
Regarding RFC2026, it looks like section 6.5 and friends *do* address
the problem adequately *IF* you read the text in 6.5.1:
... (b) the Working Group
has made an incorrect technical choice which places the quality
and/or integrity of the Working Group's product(s) in significant
jeopardy. ...
as including allegations of conflict-of-interest. If that's the understood
reading of it by the IESG, then I'm OK with 2026 as it stands...
/Valdis
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