On 11/24/17 11:31 AM, John R. Levine wrote:
Particularly odd, in that ISOC's original raison d'etre was to
provide a non-government umbrella for IETF. And arguably, there's
really very little else that ISOC does that has serious substance.
It's never really grown into a serious, broad-based professional
organization, policy organization or even a serious membership
organization. It just hacks at the edges.
I think I know a lot of people who would disagree with you. ISOC does
a great deal of quiet policy stuff in DC and Brussels, and a lot of
development work in Africa and Asia. If you haven't heard about it,
that's probably because you (and I) are not the target audience.
Well... quoting from
https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-of-the-internet/ietf-internet-society/
"The Internet Society was formed by a number of people with long-term
involvement in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). As a result,
one of its principal rationales was to provide an institutional home for
and financial support for the Internet Standards process."
(though I heard this directly from Vint's mouth, back in the day)
At the time, ISOC was presented as a membership association representing
the "Internet community," and I still carry my original membership card,
dated 1992, and stamped "Pioneer" (and, somewhere, I also have the lapel
pin that came with it) . I'm not sure ISOC was ever actually organized
as a membership organization - I can't recall ever being called to vote
on trustees, and the organizational documents no longer seem to be on
the web site. And over the years the notion of individual membership
seems to have come & gone several times, along with individual dues.
The organization is certainly not a professional group, in the sense of
IEEE or ACM.
And when it comes to policy involvement, it's not at all clear who ISOC
represents or speaks for. I've served on policy bodies for both IEEE &
ACM, and ISOC certainly does not approach policy engagement in anything
like the way those professional bodies do. Nor does it speak as an
industry association (though it does seem to have the notion of
corporate members). Nor is it anywhere near as visible as EFF – which
might well be the most effective policy group working in the Internet
space (at least in the US).
Which brings us back to the one clear role that ISOC plays - "an
institutional home for and financial support for the Internet Standards
process."
Miles Fidelman
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra