Thanks, Adrew Followup question: > The IETF continues to appoint 1/3 of ISOC Trustees; there is currently an > effort by chapters to change the governance model, and I hope that > those in the IETF who are interested in this topic pay attention to > those developments. So ISOC has a 1 billion dollar asset, but Q: What _RIGHT_ does the IETF have for revenue from that asset, now and in 10 years ? Some thoughs: If there is no fundamental ongoing _RIGHT_ by the IETF to some share of that asset, but when it's just a matter of ongoing decision making in ISOC, then indeed, IETF as an institution is living on borrowed time with its current financial model and self-assumed mode of operations. It seems clear that ISOC as an organization should continue to promote the Internet as a whole much more and win more (especially individual) members, but to me that will have to diminish the importance of IETF in ISOC. IETF is what - maybe 2000 people ? And ISOC has how many - 30x or more if i am not mistaken ? It would IMHO be highly irrational to expect that a likely shrinking 1x group (IETF) can continue to outweigh a hopefully growing 30x group (ISOC), just because of history and current, but changeable policies. It also doesn't make a lot of logical sense to me to keep the current model, given how IETF has to care for so many more networks technologies than just the Internet, and how ISOC may want to worry a lot more for layer 8/9 and legacy problems instead of <= layer 7 innovation. The forming of resistance in ISOC chapters against the .org sale, however well meaning that sale was or however badly it might have been executed shows IMHO a first wave of such organizing of an easily growing larger part of the ISOC community that is not primarily interested in IETF activities, but a lot more in whatever they see in .org beyond a glorified set of alphanumeric phone numbers. IMHO, IETF (LLC) would financially be a lot safer off for the future if it would have only sources of revenue that where not depending on ISOC. Aka: split up the asset between ISOC and IETF LLC before its too late. And to Christians point of problems with endowments: I think would be very helpfull to the individual contribution model of the IETF and survival of our (free) RFC model to have non-corporate endowment. IMHO IANA also should be moved under the LLC and outside the politics of ISOC. I think its not too difficult to avoid bureaucracy to manage the endowment. Managing the question "what to do if IETF has too much money / wasting it" is indeed a challenge. But one i would love to first see a discussion about on this mailing list before concluding that IETFs destiny is death by bureaucratic gluttony. Cheers Toerless On Sat, May 02, 2020 at 02:24:26PM -0400, Andrew Sullivan wrote: > Hi, > > On Sat, May 02, 2020 at 06:51:02AM +0100, Stewart Bryant wrote: > > I asked this once before, and was told that the key to IETF future funding was this sale. > > > > I'm writing with my ISOC staff hat on. > > I apologise if anything I said ever led you to such a conclusion, > because it was definitely not anything I intended to communicate. > What I _did_ want to communicate was that a very large percentage of > ISOC's revenue (which is revenue on which the IETF depends for roughly > half of its funding) comes from a single company in a single industry. > The domain name industry does not seem likely to dry up tomorrow, but > it basically depends on selling annual leases on identifiers made out > of letters, digits, and hyphens. The risk of the revenue drying up > appears to be low and so the income stream appears to be stable. But > prudent management of an income stream suggests that heavy dependence > on _any_ single source of income like this is unhealthy, because if an > income-collapse risk (however low the chance) comes to pass, the > result is catastrophic. To put it another way, if the Internet > Society already had a well-diversified income stream, divesting itself > of the one from PIR would be a foolish move indeed; but that's not the > world we live in and so greater diversification was desirable. > > In that sense, the "key to IETF's future funding" does depend on > ISOC's future finances. PIR's long-term health would likely be better > with certain kinds of attention that the Internet Society's Board of > Trustees will basically never be able to provide (because of the way > it is selected), and so ISOC's future funding situation remains more > difficult to forecast. > > But I am confident that, as long as the Internet Society exists and > the IETF continues to be useful to its participants, the IETF will be > able to depend on strong financial support from ISOC (should that be > desired). The LLC agreement committed ISOC to an interim contribution > of $5M/year with the expectation that the amount would be recalculated > after things had started up and an understanding that the IETF might > well be looking for more support. The COVID-19 situation has made > things even more uncertain, but ISOC in any case committed for budget > purposes to extending the minimal $5M for another year, pending > understanding of what the budget comes to look like. The IETF > continues to appoint 1/3 of ISOC Trustees; there is currently an > effort by chapters to change the governance model, and I hope that > those in the IETF who are interested in this topic pay attention to > those developments. > > As to the planned services and budget and so on, I think those are > questions that are properly the province of the IETF LLC or (more > likely) Jay. > > Best regards, > > A > > -- > Andrew Sullivan > President & CEO, Internet Society > sullivan@xxxxxxxx > +1 416 731 1261
