Dave Cridland wrote: > 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: > > 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. This more or less descibes my recent situation as well. And to those who say that input to leadership is possible, the problem isn't that you can't send something to nomcom, but rather that the system isn't set up so that a remote participant can make useful assessments of nomcom candidates. > 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. Especially since the world is moving in the other direction: Travel is only going to get more difficult (at least that's what my crystal ball says), we're trying to be more inclusive, and the technology for virtual meetings continues to improve. The IETF already looks decidedly out of step here. I doubt that's going to improve. > 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 arguments and in particular running code have increasingly been replaced by 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. Agreed. Ned
