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> it is hard to participate even for engineers, unless they spend This is made even more difficult when in certain cases there is active discouragement of participation. While not naming the individual in question, I have been told and I paraphrase here “If the operators had their
way at the IETF there would be 10 solutions for everything” When I chose to come to the IETF – and I held off for a long time – it was because there was a real issue that I saw coming, and my experience with the IETF has been interesting. On the one hand, I have certain individuals
and companies that are more than willing to work, compromise and seek a better solution. On the other hand – there are certain vendors who have made it extremely clear that no matter how much participation, they will never budge off their positions. I point
out that one of the vendors, when asked if they would look at an inter-operability draft between two proposed solutions – since it was extremely clear that both solutions were entrenched and embedded by their proponents – told me quite clearly that it was
their way or no way – and that they had zero interest in inter-operability with anything else – on the other hand – the other side stated that they would work with anyone to find a solution to the problem. Basically what I am saying here is that I am not sure that it is the IETF and its methods of functioning that are the problem – it is in some cases the outright dominance of certain vendors and their attitudes towards
engineers that are not from the same fold, who’s views and opinions are automatically discarded, and the vendors that end up almost attempting to play the role of chair. I’ve seen a vendor openly declare discussion on a topic closed – despite the fact that,
that is very much the role of the chair – and there was no one to call them out. You want wider participation from engineers and operators – the dominance and bullying by certain vendors has to be stopped. That is the real problem in my view Andrew |
