Personal opinion as an individual: +1 on all points.
Leslie.
--
Leslie Daigle
Principal, ThinkingCat Enterprises
ldaigle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 11 Mar 2019, at 11:31, John C Klensin wrote:
Andrew,
Another personal opinion...
--On Monday, March 11, 2019 09:48 -0400 Andrew Sullivan
ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:if any staff, as an individual, has any restriction to
participate in the IETF, this is not clearly in favor of the
openness and transparency that we look for at IETF.This may be where we disagree. If one accepts employment at
the Internet Society, in my opinion one implicity accepts
others' interpretations of one's actions. The goal with our
new explicit policy is to draw clear lines everyone in the
world could understand. We Internet Society employees are not
"just individuals", no matter what anyone might say. So we
have a special requirement with respect to standards. If we
don't want this. we should find employment elsewhere.I agree with the above and think that at least most of the
announced policy is reasonable and appropriate and that the only
way to identify and fix anything that turns out to be is to do
what I hope you, ISOC, and the rest of us always do: watch, see
how things evolve, and then adjust as necessary. However, I
just want to be sure that you, and everyone else, are aware of
one of the implications of the above. One could rewrite the
paragraph above to read:If one accepts employment at BigCompany, one implicitly accepts
others' interpretations of one's actions. The goal with
BigCompany's explicit policy is to draw clear lines everyone in
the world could understand. Especially because BigCompany
makes large financial contributions to the IETF (and possibly
other standards bodies) and is regularly solicited for
additional contributions and meeting sponsorships, no employee
of BigCompany is "just an individual", no matter what anyone
might say. So employees of BigCompany have special
responsibilities with respect to standards and participation in
the IETF. If people don't want those responsibilities, and the
requirements and restrictions that go with them, they should
find employment elsewhere.Such as statement, unilaterally imposed by BigCompany on its
employees, would probably be reasonable and an accurate
description of potential external inferences, but would
undermine the IETF's claim that people participate only as
individuals, independent of their other affiliations. As you
know from other conversations we have had in our individual
capacities, I believe that changes in the world in which the
IETF operates as well as a series of IETF decisions and actions
have turned that claim into a convenient and sometimes dangerous
fiction but, as long as we continue to make it, we need to
understand that organizational policies like the above are in
tension with it.Now I agree that the Internet Society's role is special and
different from that of an arbitrary BigCompany even if, for
example, that company is also supplying and sponsoring (in terms
of salaries and/or expenses) a significant fraction of the
IETF's (or IETF LLC's) leadership and decision makers. However,
I don't think we should pretend that there is a bright-line
boundary between them or between your comment and my
hypothetical company statement.In particular, if that company responded to a solicitation by
saying "The IETF LLC and any related foundations have asked us
for a significant contribution. We think the IETF is important
and we will supply it but to avoid any doubt that we are trying
to buy undue influence, we will prohibit any of our employees
from serving on the IAB or member of any standing IAB Program,
IESG or as a WG Chair, LLC Board, or as Trustees of the IETF
Trust", the IETF would be in big trouble, especially if one
company's making that move caused other companies to seriously
consider it. Getting from the Internet Society relationship and
policy to something like that would take a giant step, perhaps
several of them, but such steps are not unheard of.best,
john
