Quite the contrary. I am interpreting a few of the 'diversity' posts as saying the IETF has fewer companies participating and much fewer smaller companies participating. And I am interpreting those posts as implying some nefarious plot on the part of large, Western, White-European-Male-Dominated companies to make it that way. I was just positing that the IETF might be reflective of the networking industry as a whole. My thesis, not at all proven and one I am not married to, is there are fewer *companies* out there. With fewer companies, we should not be surprised there are fewer companies participating. On the big side, a ton of major players either merged or left the business. On the small side, a bunch of companies either got acquired or went bankrupt. Fred Baker and Keith Moore have it right: we need to attract new blood. On Mar 21, 2013, at 1:01 AM, Hector Santos <hsantos@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 3/20/2013 3:18 PM, Eric Burger wrote: > > > How much is the concentration of corporate participation in > > the IETF a result of market forces, like consolidation and > > bankruptcy, as opposed to nefarious forces, like a company > > hiring all of the I* leadership? We have mechanisms to deal > > with the latter, but there is not much we can do about the > > former. > > I am not catching the question. Are you concern there is an increasing potential for a "conflict of interest" loophole the IETF may no longer afford to manage and control? > > We will always have Cooperative Competition. The IETF damage can only be to sanction the standardization of a problematic method or technology and/or the straggle hold of a market direction. Generally, the market will speak for itself. We need the market and technology leaders for the rest to follow, but the IETF role should continue to be the gatekeeper and watchdog for open and public domain standards. > > -- > HLS >