Agree with Henning, with one addition - some IETF participants DO
participate on their own time and on their own dime, but even
participants who are paying their own way want to see progress.
Please, ask for these commitments. If a company moves someone and they
are no longer able to meet the commitment, it's easier for them to ask
to be relieved if the alternative is failing to meet explicit
commitments. We don't have to have corporate commitments to have
commitments.
If we send the message that a specification is needed "eventually",
why would anyone - sponsored or not - make it a priority?
Spencer
Henning Schulzrinne wrote:
Brian E Carpenter wrote:
To be blunt, I believe this is a direct consequence of our open
door,
individual participation ethic. If you want firm resource
commitments,
you have to ask corporations and other organizations, not
individuals,
to make the commitment. When you have firm corporate commitments,
you can
do resource planning. It becomes a different game. This is
definitely
a case of being careful what you wish for.
At least in the areas where I hang out, almost all participants are
paid for by (large) companies. The work is being done on company
time and companies often claim credit for their contributions to
standards bodies. We are not the local soup kitchen where people
serve for charity's sake. One would hope that somebody taking on
significant resource commitments clears this with their management
if it is not already part of their job description.
Given the effective monopoly of the pen granted to authors, the
community has, I believe, a right to expect timely delivery in
return. This is no different from, say, being asked to chair a
conference in the IEEE and ACM - unpaid volunteers, but there's a
very definite expectation of performance, and mechanisms to
"encourage" such performance.
There is the old saw about the "bias of low expectations". We
compete for time with other commitments authors (and WG chairs)
have. If we convey the message, implicitly at least, that our work
can wait, it will wait.
Henning
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