--On Friday, 21 January, 2005 15:47 +0100 Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > With the input resulting from discussions with Lynn Duval and > Jorge Contreras, I suggest that we can now close ticket #729 - > "General - Check with accountants & leagal advisors" as "done". Harald, For whatever it is worth at this late date, the original proposal was that _in addition to_ checking with ISOC's financial people about what would work for them and with IETF counsel about what could be acceptable (I considered those a given, not an issue), a request be made to a selected few major organizational* supporters** of the IETF that they have senior-level financial and enterprise management people review the general organizational design and concepts, comment to us on their reactions, and make suggestions as appropriate. As Dave Crocker has commented on several occasions, few of us are expert and experienced in organizational design. With the greatest of respect and appreciation to Lynn and Jorge for their efforts, I don't believe either of them would identify themselves as primarily experts in that area either. Checking with people who really are expert is only the same level of prudence that I hope we always follow with technical standards. My impression was that there was some consensus that this was a good idea, or at least not harmful: in the worst case, we could ignore advice we didn't like and, had the review been initiated in a timely way, it would not have had any negative effect on the schedule. At this stage, initiating that sort of review would almost certainly have a negative schedule impact, so we had probably best drop it. But, before you close the ticket, I, and I think the community, would appreciate some explanation as to why the original suggestion was dropped or otherwise considered unnecessary. john * Working definition of "supporter": an organization that is making a significant financial investment in the IETF by, e.g., ISOC platinum support, sending significant numbers of people who are actively participating in IETF's work to meetings, or equivalent. ** Working definition of "major": big enough to actually have real financial departments (e.g., with a senior-level CFO and staff, not just a person or two) and organization management structure with layers of enterprise and departmental management and management-side executive staff. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf