Dear Henrik, this is all very unfortunate. In my experience, the IETF tools (including xml2rfc) have improved immensely in the recent past and I feel delighted and privileged to be able to use these tools rather that some corporate-like rubbish. Also, you have always been prepared to help and answer questions, even silly ones. So, thank you very much. Good luck, Lada On 03. 11. 20 15:42, Henrik Levkowetz wrote: > Dear friends and acquaintances, > > After 20 years of writing tools for the IETF, I will let my contract for > tools maintenance lapse at the end of the year, and move on to other things. > The reason is the attitude of the current IETF Chair and LLC Board towards > contractors in particular and IETF participants in general. Care for the > community doesn't seem to matter to them. > > The current Chair and LLC Board seems to see contractors, including the > secretariat and myself, not as members of the community, but simply someone > who should do what they are told by the authority in charge. This in total > contrast with the approach of Russ Housley as IETF Chair; he explicitly > tried to make the secretariat and other contractors an integral part of the > community, inviting them in, rather than pushing them out. > > Remembering how supportive the previous full Exec Dir, Ray Pelletier had > been with respect to the tools work, I was hoping that things would change > at the end of last year with Jay Daley; unfortunately it hasn't; rather the > opposite, and it has simply become too painful to carry on. > > Things got bad at the end of last year, when the LLC Board went back on their > word after accepting my bid on the RFP in full without reservations; they > simply changed the contract offered without one word of conversation about > the changes. My bid would have been substantially different for an RFP with > the conditions in that contract. That was tough, but the final straw came at > the beginning of 2020, when a Tools Architecture and Strategy Team was > established to look at the tools future, and I was excluded from it. Being > considered a replaceable cog and not a part of the community is not a fun > environment in which to work, and I've been depressed for most of the year > following that. > > The consequence is, as indicated above, that I will not sign on to any > contract renewal or bid on any new RFP when the current term runs out for > the tools maintenance contract at the end of the year. > > Many and big thanks are due to all the IETF chairs who have supported and > encouraged my tools work: Harald Alvestrand, Brian Carpenter, Russ Housley, > and Jari Arkko. Huge appreciation and gratitude also goes to Robert Sparks > and Russ Housley for the privilege of working with them in the Tools Team > and the TMC (Tools Management Committee). And finally, thanks to all the > members of the community who over the years have made it a joy to do tools > work, by expressing their appreciation of the tools. > > ---------- > > The longer story, for background, to explain how I came to feel so strongly > about being excluded from tools architecture work and having the LLC Board > go back on their word without even thinking it was worth talking to me about > it: > > I wrote my first draft of a draft in 1999; my first meeting was IETF 49. > > In 2001, Sami Vaarala and I both presented drafts outlining NAT traversal > for Mobile IP, and based on the way we worked to merge these and build > consensus, I became co-chair of MIP4, a position I held till the group was > closed in 2015 (although there was essentially no activity during the last > 5 years). > > I early thought it absolutely silly that in the internet age, IETF documents > were not available as HTML documents with internal and external links. That > led to rfcmarkup (2002), which was deployed to provide htmlized versions of > RFCs, and later drafts, first on my own domain, and later on tools.ietf.org. > > As I was writing drafts, I was annoyed with having to manually check the format > requirements (line length, boilerplate, and whatnot), and adapted an awk > snipped as a 10-line script to check line length for me (2003). That grew, > and became 'idnits'. > > Having to read new revisions of drafts, to keep up with other Mobile IP > contributions, I found it annoying not to know where the changes in the new > rev were, and how much was changed. This led to 'rfcdiff' (2003). > > As WG co-chairs, we had to put together a summary of the status of the various > documents before each meeting -- that status report was the main way to let > participants know about draft progress, since there was no datatracker in > 2000, and no WG support in the IESG tracker tool when it appeared. Doing the > summary each meeting was very much drudge work, and becoming tired of repeating > the exercise each meeting, I created a document status page for MIP4, updated > automatically from various text files available from the draft repository and > the IESG tracker (around 2004). Other chairs saw this, and asked me to do the > same for them, and it grew from there, and was eventually incorporated into the > official datatracker as WG pages. > > Around late 2006/early 2007, serious SQL injection vulnerabilities were > discovered in the datatracker as it was then. After a lot of feet-dragging > by the vendor in addressing the vulnerabilities, Bill Fenner and I started > a skunk-works project to completely rewrite the publicly accessible datatracker > from old-style Perl to Python and Django. For 2 months we worked up to 10 > hours per day, and disclosed the effort only when we had enough in place to > show that the effort was viable. The powers that were applauded the effort, > and we carried through, and released the rewrite in June 2007. > > I continued to do tools work during 40%-50% of my time up till 2016, at no > cost to the IETF -- all work and tools were donated by myself or my employer > over the years. In 2016 I was about to switch employers, and the IETF > Chair and several previous chairs saw the opportunity to get me to work full > time on IETF tools, which I happily did until the current chair started to > seriously treat me not as a member of the community but as a contractor that > needed to be told just what to do in early 2018. After that, things went > downhill. > > As mentioned earlier, the final straw came early this year, when Alissa and > Jay decided to set up a Tools Architecture and Strategy Team, and excluded > me from that work. That was to me such a clear and unequivocal statement > of me not being considered part of the community that it drove me into a > depression, from which I could only partially recover by distancing myself > from the tools effort more and more. The depression has gone in waves in > the following months, often triggered by additional actions and statements > showing the same attitude. > > I don't know which attitude the next Chair will have, but even if it's more > in line with earlier chairs, the LLC Board and Jay, who have been part of > making this year a miserable one for me, will still be there, not much changed. > > So it's not with joy I move on and look for other things to occupy me; it's > with sadness in abandoning an area in which I've invested a lot of myself > over the last 20 years. > > My best wishes to you all going forward. > > > Henrik > > > > -- Ladislav Lhotka Head, CZ.NIC Labs PGP Key ID: 0xB8F92B08A9F76C67
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