[I have significantly cut down the thread to respond to a couple points.]
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 6:54 PM, S Moonesamy <sm+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In my opinion the easier path is to focus on contributors. The IETF culture angle is controversial because it is like saying that the person has to adopt North America culture.
In principle, one could consider the "do we want this" and "what
would the criteria be" questions in either order. In practice,
I think the former question is the more important and should be
considered first because it informs how we really feel about
diversity and the role of participants who don't attend a lot of
f2f meetings. I also believe that, while I might be very
difficult to come up with a perfect definition of remote
participation on which we could all agree, coming up with a
definite that would be at least as good at discriminating
between actual remote participants and contributors and other
sorts of folks as the current 3 of 5 rule is at discriminating
between those who understand the IETF culture and those who
don't.
The IETF is the protector of what I'd describe as a "public good". When I talk about IETF culture, part of what I mean is having people understand this and have the desire to protect, preserve, and grow it - rather than loot it for their (or their company's) profit. It might be viewed as helping the "pie get larger" instead of thinking of it as zero-sum game. Knowing what is important to preserve and protect is also important, but can be learned.
Alia