Syephan, You said: "I had a leadership role in a large, semi-political organization, I would not have argued strongly in favor or against a proposal on which the leadership asks the community for input. Not even in a private capacity." If that was aimed at me, then let me state for the record that I have not attempted to argue for or against the proposal, just tried to clarify what I think the issues are and what the underlying issues might be with respect to holding a meeting in China. If my statements were read otherwise, then I apologize. I have no "skin in this game" as they say, and if we end up not meeting in China that's completely fine with me. I just want to make sure that we (as a community) decide this based on facts and not FUD, especially since we have a great host, an excellent venue and so on. The reason we asked the community for input is that this IS indeed an unusual situation and it would not be prudent to proceed (in any direction) without the kind of input that has been received. (And one more time: I agree that the contract clause is unacceptable, at least if taken literally). As for grouping people into categories, I am not sure how useful that is either, since, as you say, some people may belong to both groups (and there are probably more groups we can come up with). But I will point out that we do have a set of criteria for meeting venue selection and some of the items brought up in this discussion are not part of those criteria. Perhaps they should be, but they are not currently. Ole Ole J. Jacobsen Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal Cisco Systems Tel: +1 408-527-8972 Mobile: +1 415-370-4628 E-mail: ole@xxxxxxxxx URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf