On Sun, 24 Mar 2019 at 10:52, Ted Lemon <mellon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 24, 2019, at 11:06 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: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".Because of the way nomcom eligibility works, it effectively does require special membership: you have to be able to attend three out of five IETFs in a row. We don’t call this a membership, but in effect it is. The minimum cost of the membership is three times the IETF conference fee plus travel expenses.
This is correct. I have a number of RFCs to my name, but at only 2.5 meetings in two decades, I don't get a possibility of a say in our leadership. This irritates me, even though I've been less involved of late.
But I would note it's not that this is terrible. As Brian says, we do (in principle) do our work on mailing lists, reserving meetings for things that require high bandwidth discussion. We do (in principle) avoid voting and defer to technical arguments and running code. We do (in principle) maintain one of the most open SDOs, with no "pay to play" etc.
The lack of NomCom eligibility does rankle a bit on its own, true. The juxtaposition of NomCom against the other principles the IETF holds makes for a stark contrast, so the NomCom rules look out of place and against our own culture.
The erosion of those other principles worries me much, much, more.
Decisions increasingly occur at meetings and if you "only" follow the mailing lists, that's no longer enough in some Working Groups. Technical arguments and in particular running code have increasingly been replaced by market share. And as Ted says, the membership fees we don't have are several thousand dollars.
This things are nowhere near critical yet, of course. But they are headed that way, and I think this is a worsening of the IETF.
Dave.
