On 5/2/2020 10:04 AM, John R Levine wrote:
On Sat, 2 May 2020, Christian Huitema wrote:
... But at the same time, the stable source of revenues removes the dependency on contributions from members, and thus mightily diminishes the influence of these members on the operation and direction of the Internet Society. There is peril there too.
The ISOC contribution to the IETF is $5M/year, which seems rather a stretch to get from individual contributions.
That's true. Most likely these would be contribution from
organizations that rely on the standard process. But there could
also be contributions in kind -- for example, relying more on
volunteers and less on staff for functions like document
preparation or tool development. That's the kind of trade-off the
IETF would have to make if the budget diminished.
As I'm sure you're aware, ISOC members elect 2/3 of the board, 1/3 from the chapters, 1/3 from the organizations. The IAB selects the other 1/3, currently including me.
Yes, and so far this selection process has provided a good set of checks against mission drift. But I am a bit concerned whether these checks would still be enough if the Internet Society was managing a large endowment. I see how academia evolved from being managed for teaching to being managed by large administrative staffs. The same kind of forces would be at play.
-- Christian Huitema
