Dear IESG,
The undersigned write to appeal the current Guidance on in-Person and Online meetings (https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/interim-meetings-guidance/).
Remedy requested:
The
current guidance should be reverted to the previous guidance and a
proposal for updated procedures brought to the community in an
appropriate venue. MTGVENUE seems like an appropriate place to discuss
this, but a new list or other designated venue would be fine.
Background:
The
MoQ working group chairs requested the Secretariat to provide letters
of invitation for an interim meeting to be held in Seattle, Washington
in January of 2023. The Secretariat referred the matter to the IESG,
which failed to render a timely decision; it eventually instructed the
Secretariat to decline, but at a time so late that the decision had long
been moot.
The
IESG then promulgated the updated guidance on January 27th of 2023.
While members of the IESG have stated that they believe that this was a
clarification of existing guidance, issues were raised with the language
as early as January 29th of 2023. Among the most serious of these
concerns is the following text:
"If invitation letters are required for visa purposes, the host of the
meeting needs to be able to issue those to all interested in-person
participants."
This
fails to recognize that interim meetings may take place without a host,
and it binds those with a host to making a significant legal commitment
which may not be possible (e.g. if an "interested in-person participant"
comes from a country under sanction by the host's jurisdiction).
There
are other issues with the text, among them its failure to recognize
that "in-person" meetings are now by default hybrid, with full support
of MeetEcho or similar facilities. There is an additional ambiguity in this text: "The proposed meeting venue should also be
accessible without
participants needing to sign non-disclosure-agreements (NDAs) or similar
agreements." as it is not clear on whether agreeing to abide by a code of conduct at a
venue is a "similar agreement".
These
issues were raised again at the plenary of IETF 116, and the IESG
agreed at the time to bring it back to the community after discussion at
their retreat in May of 2023 (see https://youtu.be/LRRMKm4tXIc?t=6140 for Lars agreeing that after the retreat the IESG would bring it to the community).
The
IESG has not brought it back to the community. When a private request
for clarification was made to the IESG, the response given was that it
had been discussed but that the IESG intends to promulgate a new set of
guidelines without community discussion.
The
undersigned believe that this is both contrary to their public
commitment and contrary to the interests of the community. The choice
of the community to carry out a working group process and publish an RFC
on meeting venue guidance is a strong indication that meeting mechanics
are a topic where community input is required. RFC 8718 has nuanced
guidance on some aspects of this, and the IESG guidance in the document
cited above does not, in the opinion of the undersigned, follow its
guidance in considering trade-offs. A conversation with the community
on why this should be different seems warranted.
Thank
you for your attention and we look forward to a resolution of this
matter and a public conversation on a proposed updated set of
guidelines.
best regards,
Ted Hardie
Alan Frindell
