Henrik, You will be severely missed. Good luck in whatever comes next. Ron Juniper Business Use Only -----Original Message----- From: ietf <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Russ Housley Sent: Tuesday, November 3, 2020 10:04 AM To: Henrik Levkowetz <henrik@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: IETF <ietf@xxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: A sad farewell [External Email. Be cautious of content] Hernik: I am sad that you will not be participating any longer. I will miss you. In July 2007, I told the whole plenary about the heroic rewrite that you and Bill Fenner did for all of us: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/69/slides/plenaryw-3/sld9.htm__;!!NEt6yMaO-gk!TYOs5pfCv2S85pEhP4oMLvlXqWfwQfDbxgEGl9WL1otlo6nicWDbV1Q4VV00Tpva$ I wish you well. Russ > On Nov 3, 2020, at 9:42 AM, Henrik Levkowetz <henrik@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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 > > > >