--On Tuesday, October 3, 2023 07:00 -0700 S Moonesamy <sm+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi Jason, > At 06:51 AM 02-10-2023, Livingood, Jason wrote: >> Saying that "pay-to-play fee was instituted" seems a little >> overblown. >> >> Pay-to-play **IS NOT** IMO: >> - Paying a fee to attend a conference in order to partially >> cover the costs of that conference >> - An employer letting an employee spend time volunteering to >> serve as a WG chair or AD, etc. >> >> Here's what pay-to-play **IS** IMO: >> - Paying a fee of $X for a company to join and participate in >> an organization (without the fee you could not join a >> mailing list, etc.) - Having documents that are approved by >> voting by named, paying companies & where the amount of >> payment drives the weight of the vote (i.e., if Company A >> paid $10 and Company B paid $5, then Company A's vote is >> weighted at 2x Company B's vote) > > It could be argued that it is possible to participate in > standard-setting by joining a mailing list. I doubt that it > is practical or else the participation set would reflect that. For those, including I think Jason, who have argued that "pay-to-play" is the wrong description of the core problem, I agree. I just don't think a perhaps-questionable choice of terminology makes that problem go away. "Join a mailing list" is, to me, an example. Perhaps my memory is suffering from nostalgia for older times, but my sense is that, some years ago, it really was possible to effectively participate in the IETF standards development process by joining and participating on a few mailing lists. The mailing lists were actually the main locus for decision-making and the IESG was steering and, to some extent, managing, but not also laying out the terms and conditions of the discussions. The other investment required to participate in the IETF is time and, no matter what else changes or remains the same, those who are in a position to spend most of their time on the IETF (whether because someone is paying them to do so or because they have minimal other commitments) are going to be in the advantage relative to people whose participation is necessarily more limited. If it works, "join a mailing list" helps get the perspectives of those participants who are not substantially full time get into the system and be treated fairly because it is asynchronous -- one can, in principle, look at a mailing list every day or two, catch up on what has been going on, and still contribute effectively. However, we have now fragmented things along multiple dimensions. WGs that would probably have been be unified years ago have been organized separately, leading to more mailing lists that have to be followed to stay aware of all-important context and maybe benefiting those who are interested in one narrow topic and nothing else (and contributing to the number of WGs per AD and complaints that ADs can't follow them all closely so need to "trust WG Chairs", but that is a different problem). We seem to be moving topics from the IETF list to specialized ones on slight provocation, again increasing the number of lists that one has to follow to participate effectively and increasing costs in ways that fall heavily on those whose participation time is limited. We have also shifted more discussion to GitHub and interim meetings, both of which seem to be far more useful in near-real-time (and watch/read-every-transaction) situations than for participants who need to be more asynchronous. Each of those changes has been made after "consulting" the community, but, however subtle, the change from "seeking and determining community consensus" to "consulting the community", with the latter followed by "then doing what we think best" can turn into another piece of the problem if the "we" group is two homogeneous because of the factors that have been mentioned. Determining IETF consensus may be too, but it seem to me that the risks are greater, and the remedies fewer, than with consultations. > The second description of "pay-to-play" is about voting > rights. The closest thing to voting rights in the Internet > Standards Process is the Internet Engineering Steering Group > ballot procedure. There might be a perception that an AD who > is affiliated with an organization would favour that > organization. Again, Jason is correct. I don't believe there is any evidence that anyone (or their companies) has bought their way to an IESG position except through the rather unfortunate condition of almost no one without significant employer/organizational support being in a position to volunteer for the positions. The latter may be many things, but it is not "pay to play" in the usual sense of that term. And, while that perception might well occur, my experience suggests that it would almost always be incorrect. Part of the reason is that the Nomcom almost always does its job: people who have not been active in the IETF for a while are very unlikely to be selected. Someone who has been active and has been parroting a company party line without critically evaluating it themselves is very unlikely to end up on the IESG. Shared almost-cultural assumptions and positions among many large company actors are, of course, another issue, but that gets back to the point I made earlier. best, john
