--On Wednesday, July 25, 2018 11:59 -0700 Randy Bush
<randy@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> The thing is, AD is a job. Do we want the job to be done
>> well, or not? If we want it to be done well, why is it a
>> volunteer position?
>
> in the new IETF Corporation, will there be a dress code? will
> ADs fly business class?
As the risk of agreeing with Randy (this is beginning to feel
like the good old days), let me add an observation that I think
is consistent with his comments. Most of us have observed what
happens when standards bodies and similar entities, including
ones with regulatory effects (or close to them) start relying on
paid staff to make the actual technical and organizational
decisions. For those lucky enough to have avoided those
situations, the result is almost always expanding and
self-protective bureaucracies, concentration of power, and
decisions that get made in ways that reflect the interests of
those bureaucracies. In many cases, those jobs tend to
attract people who can't or won't get jobs doing what the IETF
might describe as "real work" -- design of protocols that have a
succeed in the marketplace, implementation, operations, and so
on.
Let's not go there.
I have to suggest that, if the IESG job has come to involve too
many responsibilities and too much workload, it is at least
partially because IESG members, over time, have chosen to allow
that. I think that the community should be very concerned if we
are simultaneously discussing an overloaded IESG and moving
strategic responsibilities away from IASA and toward the IESG
(see the IAOC plenary report). Whether splitting the IESG's
management and steering functions away from document approval
(as discussed in a draft I mentioned a few days ago) is a good
idea or not --and I can argue that either way-- it would be a
way to radically change the workload. There are certainly other
ways and perhaps we should start with a serious review of the
number of things the IESG needs to have its fingers in and what
that costs. Similarly, there have been proposals in the past to
adjust the workload the IETF takes on to match community
resources (including IESG time); perhaps it is time to revisit
them.
Or we could figure out how to pay the IESG (and, by an extension
of the same reasoning, the IAB and the LLC Trustees), and then
start worrying about supporting those people in the style to
which they would like to become accustomed and/or at a level
corresponding to their perception of their importance. Dress
codes, business class travel, deluxe suites in meeting hotels,
etc., would be only a few steps behind.
john
