On Sat, May 28, 2016 at 12:34 AM, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote:
if we start to make
decisions about what it is appropriate or not for us to do based
on what some group of critics might find useful, that is the
most purely political decision-making of all.
I think it's not so much a question of making decisions based on which group of critics might say what. It's which decisions and statements we make.
The IETF is a technical organization, and debating technical issues is within its charter and its expertise. If the IETF makes statements in other areas, then it will be making statements that are outside its charter and area of expertise. Due to lack of expertise, those statements are likely to be less effective than those of other organizations that *are* in their area of expertise, and if we are unlucky, they could turn out to be poorly worded or backfire.
But there's another problem, too: because the IETF is a technical organization that publishes documents, everyone who participates in the IETF by definition finds it acceptable to make technical statements, otherwise they wouldn't be IETF participants. That's what they signed up for. They might not be willing to make statements in other fields, because that's not what they signed up for. We don't know until we ask them. We might want to do that before making non-technical statements in the name of the organization.
Again, this is separate from debates on our internal codes of conduct. Those are discussions that participants have to have or at least be affected by, because the organization cannot operate without codes of conduct.