Re: [hrpc] I-D Action: draft-irtf-hrpc-political-03.txt

Hi Juliana,

Thank you very much for your review! Some responses in-line:

On 7/9/19 1:42 AM, Juliana Guerra wrote:
> Hello Niels, I've read your I-D and I can't say something else than I
> think it's very interesting and you've synthesized very well the
> previous versions. And I'm not sure if it is out of the draft scope, but
> in ietf-lac (1) there is a recent (and also a long term, as I've seen)
> discussion on lac community participation in IETF. Some of the issues
> are:
> 
> - the possibility for lac community to publish RFCs
> - meetings in Lac region
> - participation fees
> 
> I shared your draft, inviting them to participate in the discussion. I'm
> almost sure they will not, but all of this just to say I think it is
> important to mention financial issues in this draft. Not exactly to
> develop what was written before but related to "How voluntary are open
> standards?". Every person who has commented something in the list said
> mention the difficulties that participations fees represent for Lac
> community. And rather than economic, I think this is political taking
> into account the disparities in IETF participation and production (2).
> 

I fully agree with you that this is an important issue.  In a previous version of this draft we had a paragraph on how the finances of the IETF [0]. I have left this out of the current version since it seemed to distract from the main research question, because it was a second order concern, in relation to the politics of protocols. Please allow me to explain.

Many people in the IETF are convinced that the meetings are not intended to bring in new people, this actually has become an official non-goal in the meeting venue selection process per draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process and draft-krishnan-ietf-meeting-policy. The current consensus seems to be that participating in the IETF is not dependent of physical participation, but can also be done through mailinglists and remote tools. 

I agree with you that the threshold to participate in the IETF is high because of the high pricing of meetings, the abundant travel, the tooling, and many other issues, some of which you have highlighted in draft-guerra-feminism. Nonetheless I am not sure whether adding this argumentation to draft-irtf-hrpc-political would increase the I-Ds usefulness or chances of progressing. This draft is meant as a platform to counter the argument 'protocols are neutral', and in that sense it is a beginning, not an end point for further discussion. 

So in short, I agree with you on your argument, but I am not sure whether adding this concern will either improve the issue, or the draft. But of course, always happy to discuss.

[0] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-hrpc-political-01#section-5.2.1

> I suppose this discussion is not new (as I am new here) and I would
> really like to read from you and others in this list, can it be part of
> this draft or another in HRPC?
> 

All discussions on participation cost differentiation, as well as diversity, spark a lot of discussion in the IETF, as the archives of ietf@ietf can attest. Instead of having more discussions about this in I-Ds and on mailinglists I would actually be curious to hear what members on the IAB or IAOC hailing from LATAM have to say about this, and see what is possible. That might be a more productive way forward instead of redoing a discussion that has been had several times. 

Thanks again for your review and contribution!

Best,

Niels

> Regards,
> 
> Juliana
> 
> (1) https://mail.lacnic.net/mailman/listinfo/ietf-lac
> 
> (2) http://www.arkko.com/tools/recrfcstats/d-countrydistr.html
> http://www.arkko.com/tools/recrfcstats/d-contdistr.html (shared in lac
> list)
> 
> 
> On 17/05/19 10:41, internet-drafts@ietf.org wrote:
>>
>> A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
>> This draft is a work item of the Human Rights Protocol Considerations RG of the IRTF.
>>
>>         Title           : Notes on networking standards and politics
>>         Author          : Niels ten Oever
>> 	Filename        : draft-irtf-hrpc-political-03.txt
>> 	Pages           : 15
>> 	Date            : 2019-05-17
>>
>> Abstract:
>>    The IETF cannot ordain what standards or protocols are to be used on
>>    networks, but the standards development process in the IETF does have
>>    an impact on society through its normative standards setting process.
>>    Among other things, the IETF's work affects what is perceived as
>>    technologically possible and useful where networking technologies are
>>    being deployed, and its standards reflect what is considered by the
>>    technical community to be feasible and good practice.  Whereas there
>>    might not be agreement among the Internet protocol community on the
>>    specific political nature of the technological development process
>>    and its outputs, it is undisputed that standards and protocols are
>>    both products of a political process, and they can also be used for
>>    political means.
>>
>>
>> The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-irtf-hrpc-political/
>>
>> There are also htmlized versions available at:
>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-hrpc-political-03
>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-irtf-hrpc-political-03
>>
>> A diff from the previous version is available at:
>> https://www.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=draft-irtf-hrpc-political-03
>>
>>
>> Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of submission
>> until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org.
>>
>> Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
>> ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
>>
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> 
> 
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-- 
Niels ten Oever
Researcher and PhD Candidate
DATACTIVE Research Group
University of Amsterdam

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