Re: [Last-Call] [Manycouches] Artart last call review of draft-ietf-shmoo-remote-fee-05

[Mirja Kuehlewind <ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi John and John,

Top-posting with a bit of clarification. The document has the following text:

If unlimited free remote participation is
   determined to adversely affect the number of paying participants or
   the cost of free participation emerges to be a signification factor,
   the LLC might implement additional measures to manage these costs.
   If the LLC decides to do this, they should make their decision and
   rationale known to the community.  As discussed in the next section,
   assessment of eligibility is difficult and any limit on the number of
   available free registrations can cause unfairness and negatively
   impact openness.

As you can imagine, this was discussed quite a bit in the group and also before the group was chartered when the remote fee was introduced first. However, this text actually tries to hint that limiting the number of waiver or introducing a check are not good options. That's why this text takes about “additional measures”. But we didn’t want to rule out anything because if it’s a problem for the financial viability of the IETF, it really goes beyond the scope of this document to give explicit guidance. Also given we use this model for a while already and we didn’t see problems of misuse or anything like this, I think the group agreed that it doesn’t make any sense to try to design any guidance for a hypothetical case where we don’t know the exact conditions for.

The document states explicitly that rational should be provided to the community if any additional measures are required. This was added based on group discussion. However, it was also acknowledged that RFC8711 generally requires the LLC to consult with the community for this kind of decision, so I don’t think we should add anything special in this document to the process.

Back to John’s point (replying here now instead to your other mail):

I still prefer to have the high-level principle stated as broadly as it is now. And I don’t think we need a clause for exceptions. However, the discussion in the later section makes it clear that you might need weight this principle with other needs, e.g. if there is question about the sustainability of the IETF as a whole.

Mirja

On 30. Jan 2023, at 23:08, John Scudder <jgs=40juniper.net@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi All,

On Jan 30, 2023, at 4:23 PM, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote:

The question in my mind (which I think overlaps with parts of
John Scudder's concerns) is that, if we are going to say,
however vaguely and ambiguously, that the LLC can decide that
fee waivers are costing too much and start limiting their number
and/or limiting the conditions under which they can be approved,
do we want to provide any general guidance?

Since I got name-checked, I should say for clarity that my concern while it might be said to be related, is distinct from John K’s. To the extent I’ve taken a position on providing guidance about conditions, it’s found in the text I suggested earlier: “… this document takes no absolute position as to whether conditions might be placed on a participant’s eligibility for such an option, **or what those conditions, if any, might be**” (emphasis added). I’m comfortable with leaving the details completely up to the LLC for now. Note “for now”, we can always revisit this later in the — in my view unlikely — event that a problem arises.

My own gripe is limited to, I think the document is not clear enough in saying that conditions (albeit of an explicitly unspecified nature) are permitted to be applied at all. I suppose one might squint hard and call that the degenerate case of “providing general guidance” but I think it’s a reach.

—John S
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