--On Tuesday, June 30, 2020 20:59 +0300 Yoav Nir
<ynir.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Submitting a legal document disclosing all potential COI is
> more difficult. It's probably better that I consult with the
> company lawyer first. The company lawyer would advise me to
> forget it. So I wouldn't volunteer.
>
> Now that's just me, but I don't think my position is all
> that unique.
No, it is not that unique. Nor, I think, is someone who is
independent but has multiple consulting clients and/or Board
affiliations. Hypothetically, none of them amount to more than
10%-20% of time and several have absolutely nothing to do with
anything the IETF is working on or likely to be working on
(e.g., the relationships are to real estate investments, local
small-town politics, support for litigation in which the IETF is
not potentially involved in any way, or even user interface or
customer support issues that the IETF has several times declined
to get anywhere near). And, again hypothetically, some of those
unrelated activities come with non-disclosure agreements about
the details of the work or who it is for. I ran across an
article recently in which a condition for inheritance and
continuing involvement with and support from a family business
was a great deal of privacy for the family to the extent of
photographs -- nothing to do with the IETF, but possibly
instructive.
The bottom line is that, while it is really easy to make simple
(and, I think, somewhat self-righteous) statements to the effect
that no one should be on the nomcom or participating in the
leadership who is not willing or able to make all of their
involvements and commitments public (or even to trust the IETF
leadership with all of that information), the result would be a
reduction in the diversity of views and perspectives represented
in the IETF. Possibly we could make more sophisticated rules
but, especially given the discussions of the last few months,
I'm skeptical about it.
And, in that regard, the (admittedly rather simplistic) "no more
than two actually on the Nomcom from one company" rule is
attractive in two ways, the need to take a conservative view of
relationships like subsidiaries and significant ownership
notwithstanding. One is that it provides the IETF some
protection against a hypothetical company (or corporate culture)
that would encourage or reward people for getting on the Nomcom,
or participating in particular decisions one there, for reasons
we might consider nefarious. The other is that, even if the
reasons there are many volunteers from one company and/or many
of its (or its subsidiaries, etc.) in the leadership and the
reason for that is that the organizational culture includes
public-spirited participation (with no company involvement in
actual decision-making), it looks bad to outsiders trying to
examine the IETF and asking questions about who is in control.
I don't believe that the two person rule provides enough
protection against either situation, but it is lots better than
nothing and I despair of our being able to do significantly
better without side effects that are worse.
john
