On Sun, 24 Mar 2019, Brian Carpenter wrote:
That's *exactly* why rough consensus on technical decisions in the IETF is required to be based on mailing list discussion, since forever. (Also why we dont have voting!) But when it gets to picking humans for jobs, or - worse - ejecting them from jobs, it's always been assumed that some degree of personal knowledge is needed. That isnt sacred writ, but there are obvious issues in changing it - e.g. echo chamber effects in online discourse.
IETF is the one organisation that comes to my mind that is extremely open and you don't even need an affiliation to productively participate without even showing up to a single meeting in person.
I participated in my first physical IETF meeting and didn't feel much at home at all, even though I had participated in mailing list discussions for several years before that.
I have attended other SDOs and there it's definitely a lot more about membership, affiliations, closed discussions before closed voting and then after everything is said and done, publish documents.
Now, I'm sure some people feel intimidated by the tone and way things are done in the IETF, but it's definitely not closed or requiring special membership/affiliation to "play".
-- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@xxxxxxxxx
