On 11/06/2020 19:34, Pete Resnick wrote:
On 11 Jun 2020, at 11:37, tom petch wrote:
Looking at RFC8711 I see
"7.5. IETF Meeting Revenues
Meeting revenues are another important source of funding that
supports the IETF, coming mainly from the fees paid by IETF meeting
participants. The IETF Executive Director sets those meeting fees,
in consultation with other IETF LLC staff and the IETF community,
with approval by the IETF LLC Board. Setting these fees and
projecting the number of participants at future meetings is a key
part of the annual budget process."
Elsewhere in that cluster of RFC that came out in February, in the
context of venue, it explicitly calls out the need for consensus as
declared by the IETF Chair. Here there is no call for consensus. If
the IETF had wanted more control then it should not have approved
RFC8711:-) I think that Jay was well within his rights to take the
actions he did.
Tom, it was made pretty clear in the discussion of RFC 8788 that when
the IETF referred to "meetings", it did not have in mind the idea of an
entirely remote meeting. Similarly, in the same cluster as 8711, neither
8718 nor 8719 anticipates the idea that a meeting would be held with no
"location" or "venue" at all. So to say of 8711 that 7.5 clearly
anticipates entirely online meetings is a bit of a stretch. It doesn't
absolutely conclude otherwise, but the discussion of 8788 should have
been a pretty good hint that the community would have been surprised by
the interpretation, and the better course would have been to ask the
community what it intended by the text in 7.5 of 8711.
Also, I know of several people, and I'm sure others know of similarly
situated folks, who are regular participants but are from
time-to-to-time between jobs or in other financial situations, who have
specifically decided not to attend the physical meeting and instead
participate remotely because of the lack of registration fee (in
addition to not having to pay for travel). Folks have come to expect
that participation in the face-to-face meeting would incur expenses, but
participating remotely, whether by listening to the audio feed and using
jabber or email to send in comments, or more recently by Meetecho, was
going to be free. While not the only reasonable interpretation of our
history and BCPs on the matter, having remote participation be free is
certainly not an unreasonable interpretation of the status quo.
So "well within his rights" seems a bit of a reach. Perhaps "not
completely unjustified in assuming" is closer.
Pete
OK. I do see in RFC8719 a reference to virtual meetings, admittedly in
the context of these being in addition to the regular cycle of three
meetings a year, so it would seem that virtual meetings were seen as
possible in this cluster of RFC.
And, to state the obvious, this cluster of RFC say that if people want
to provide guidance to the LLC then they should gain consensus via an
RFC as has been done with RFC8718.
So where is the I-D giving LLC guidance on what it is and is not
acceptable to charge a fee for in relation to a meeting:-)
Tom Petch
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