Re: Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and employment status

[Donald Eastlake <d3e3e3@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 7:14 AM, Roni Even <ron.even.tlv@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If this is true it make me wonder why does the IETF care about the affiliation of WG chairs and ADs

Roni Even

The reason traditionally given that IETF participants in general give their affiliation is for purposes of individual identification.

The reason there is concern about too many people with the same affiliation in positions where they judge consensus or the like is to avoid situations where the organization with which they are affiliated would appear to or would have the possibility to dominate.

The only hard and fast rules about this in the IETF that I know about are that nomcom volunteers are required to give their affiliation and no more than two voting nomcom members can have the same affiliation. Whether this rule is good or bad is a matter of judgement but it was adopted after multiple cases where more than two randomly selected voting nomcom members had the same affiliation and some people felt this created the impression of dominance.

Thanks,

Donald 

 

From: ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mark Atwood
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 7:17 PM
To: ietf@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and employment status

 

Much of what makes the IETF work is how it is very different from other standards bodies (such as IEEE, ANSI, ISO, NIST, ITU, etc etc).

 

One key difference is that "groups" do not join the IETF.

 

Cisco, IBM, MCI, or Linden Lab are not a "members" of the IETF.  No agency of the US government, or of any other government, is a "member" of the IETF.  No university, non-profit, PIRG, PAC, or other "concerned citizens group", is a "member" of the IETF.

 

Only individual people can be "members" of the IETF.  And "membership" is mostly defined as "who shows up on the mailing list" and "who shows up at the meetings".

 

There have been many cases in the history of the IETF where well known members who are in the middle of writing standards or of chairing various important working groups, who have worked for well-known large companies, will change employers, to other companies, to startups, or to personal sabbaticals switch around between industry, academia, research, and government, and this will not, does not, and should not, affect their position inside the IETF at all.

 

It appears that sometimes people, inside and outside of the IETF, need to be reminded of this.

 

If you want to write standards like the IEEE and ITU do it, you know where you can find them.

 

But when you choose to participate in the IETF process, that is how it works.

 

And if someone feels that anyone's change in employment status should affect their standing in any part of the IETF process, that person has missed the point, and needs to be pointedly reminded of their mistake.

 

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