Re: [Gendispatch] IETF transparency and diversity

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

Tony,

An email address is not attribution, and you know it.

Furthermore IETF participants are supposed to represent their own 
technical views as to what is best for the Internet as a whole, NOT 
represent some company that in your mind might make them seem 
"attributed".   This is a feature.

Keith

On 4/7/21 12:35 PM, Tony Rutkowski wrote:
>
> Having watched dozens of standards bodies like the IETF try to assess 
> themselves for the past forty plus years - generally not well - this 
> list seems to follow the norm.  There are a relative handful of people 
> on this list, and the participation is highly skewed.  3/4 of the 
> posts are from just 21 people who are almost all insiders perpetuating 
> status.
>
> Perhaps the most significant issue facing the IETF was raised by Phil 
> on 31 March - namely that the lack of transparency of interest is an 
> increasing challenge to the organisation - especially with 
> anticompetitive behavior becoming the subject of regulatory scrutiny 
> and litigation.  The metrics of this list underscores the challenge - 
> the principal proponents and decision shapers/makers lack attribution.
>
> During Steve Lukasik's last years, he viewed the IETF as one of his 
> principal failures.  It was a great idea when he signed off on its 
> initial precursor formation to get out-of-the-box collaboration among 
> the researchers that DARPA was funding. Attribution as well as 
> collaboration incentives existed through the funding mechanisms.  
> However, when it was cut loose in the 1990s, any sense of attribution 
> of individual contributors and decision shapers was lost.  As Phil 
> notes, it opened the door was opened for all kinds of mischief; and in 
> contrast to almost all other standards bodies, the IETF is alone in 
> avoiding attribution. Getting the LLC to buy more liability insurance 
> has its limits.
>
> The IETF's diversity challenge is also tied into the lack of 
> transparency.  If you crunch the numbers and examine how relatively 
> few registrants for IETF meetings continue their participation, the 
> organization is effectively self-distilling around a set of hardy 
> perennials who are motivated by un-attributed factors to stick with 
> the organization to pursue some obscure objectives.  Indeed, the 
> IETF's substantial insularity and institutional self-aggrandisement 
> coupled with a set of rapidly evolving technologies progressed in 
> other far more active and effective bodies, does not bode well.
>
> So all of the above suggest that maintaining a generic IETF discourse 
> list is probably a good thing.  --tony r
>
>