Hi Stephen,
At 05:31 PM 1/29/2017, Stephen Farrell wrote:
In this case, and as mentioned previously, there is at
least one aspect that goes beyond mtgvenue, in that those
leaving from one place to come to a meeting might be
restricted in returning home. That seems to me to be an
order of magnitude more problematic than not being allowed
entry. The "order of magnitude" aspect of that is maybe
not relevant for IETF discussion, but the "not able to
contribute since not able to return home" aspect would
surely be, as would the "not able to travel to *any*
'foreign' f2f meetings since not able to return home."
At the lower end, it is a visa problem. The difference between this
discussion and the one about Singapore is that the latter was not
related to entry of IETF attendees. Jari went through the statistics
to see whether there were IETF attendees from the affected
countries. In terms of attendance, the impact is not
significant. The IAB appointed a person from RIPE NCC on the
IAOC. Based on the message which the person posted to Facebook, I
guess that the person may not be able to attend the next IETF meeting
in the U.S. It is up to the IESG to assess whether the impact should
be raised from not significant to something else.
Anyway, and also speaking personally, I do think there
may be a valid public IETF reaction here, in addition to
mtgvenue considerations, which is that we, as with any
scientific or technical organisation with participants
welcome from all over the globe, depend on the rule of
law as it relates to travel being somewhat rational and
relatively stable. (*)
I think the ACM text could be quite close to something
on which we could garner IETF consensus as it mostly
says just the above.
My preference is for the public IETF reaction to be based on open
discussion instead of a discussion behind closed doors. I don't
think that IETF Consensus should be a matter of convenience.
And yes, you may well be right that there will be more
pressing matters on which we may need to consider comment
in future. Personally, I think I'd argue that even if that's
the case (which we all hope won't turn out true but fear
might) then we'll be better off having had some discussion
ahead of time as to where we do or do not have IETF consensus
for relevant comment being within our scope.
I scanned the list quickly and I only found two IESG members, the
IETF Chair and you, commenting on the issue. Do the other IESG
members have an opinion about the topic? I'll Cc them to find out.
There was a comment a word which is fashionable nowadays [1]. That
word sounds hollow given the silence of the persons who have been
using that word.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
1. https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg100833.html