Hi, On Mon, May 04, 2020 at 02:25:13AM +0200, Toerless Eckert wrote: > So ISOC has a 1 billion dollar asset Well, maybe. We did have an independent valuation done, of course, but that valuation was undertaken before any ICANN decision. I therefore don't know whether we have this information now and I'd not be willing to speculate about it without consulting with legal and financial experts on the matter (which we have not yet done). > Q: What _RIGHT_ does the IETF have for revenue from that asset, > now and in 10 years ? I cannot guarantee anything about 10 years from now, given that 10 years from now the domain name industry may be very different. Formally, of course, the point of the LLC was to give the IETF certain degrees of freedom from the Internet Society, and in doing that it gave up a strict right to any of the revenue except for whatever rights it gets by agreement with ISOC. > IETF is what - maybe 2000 people ? And ISOC has how many - 30x or more > if i am not mistaken ? The latest published numbers count nearly 68,000 members worldwide, with 135 chapters and special interest groups. But this is a bit of apples:oranges, because of course IETF participants are all active at least in their particular area of concern, whereas not all ISOC members are really active. > 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. This is a lot later than the first wave. There are definitely people who are active participants in the Internet Society who do not really see why ISOC ought to be contributing to the IETF's operations. > 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. That isn't really possible to do now. Had there been an endowment, it _might_ have been possible (there are legal questions, but still, it was at least logically possible). PIR is a supporting organization of ISOC, however, so it can't have shareholders. Therefore, the path to revenue from PIR remains through the Internet Society. > IMHO IANA also should be moved under the LLC and outside > the politics of ISOC. IANA nothing to do with ISOC as far as I know. That's an ICANN job through its subsidiary PTI. If the IETF wants a different supplier of the protocol parameters functions, that is a decision the IETF can take I believe without consulting ISOC. > I think its not too difficult to avoid bureaucracy to manage the > endowment. Well, you have an endowment now, but it is too small to generate the income you need. But questions about that are appropriately directed at the LLC. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan President & CEO, Internet Society sullivan@xxxxxxxx +1 416 731 1261
