--On Sunday, March 30, 2008 9:00 PM -0700 Doug Ewell <doug@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Theodore Tso <tytso at MIT dot EDU> wrote: > >> A valid technical concern is easy to deal with. If they >> provide an idea, I suspect a cautious working group chair >> might insist on knowing their real name and company >> affiliation, since there have been past examples where >> companies have tried to inject patented technologies into a >> standards specification. > > I suppose a few personal notes might be in order regarding > "company affiliation," since I've served as editor for both > RFC 4645 and draft-ietf-ltru-4645bis, both products of the > LTRU Working Group that started this thread, and both under > the title "Consultant" instead of a company or other > organizational affiliation. > > There are a couple of reasons. One is that my company, which > had apparently been embarrassed by employees posting personal > opinions on an industry message board in a way which made > them sound like official company positions, instituted a set > of "Internet and Electronic Communications Guidelines" some > years ago which prohibits employees from "stating their > [company] affiliation over the Internet" unless required as > part of their job description. >... Doug, Even this stringent a rule would presumably not prevent you from disclosing your affiliation to a WG Chair or the Secretariat if you were asked a specific question in order to help authenticate you. If it is possible to read our rules to prevent the entities who might legitimately ask you for that information from keeping it confidential if that were reasonably required, then those rules may need clarification or tweaking. But there is a huge difference between stating/ advertising a company affiliation in a mailing list email address or at the top of an RFC and responding to the sort of query that I think Ted's note suggests. john _______________________________________________ IETF mailing list IETF@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf