Re: [Iasa20] I-D Action: draft-hall-iasa20-workshops-report-00.txt

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Hi Dave,

On 22/03/2017 05:06, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 3/20/2017 6:29 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>>>    o  The line between the IETF and ISOC is not organizationally clear-
>>>       cut,
>> Better get used to it. Since the IETF is intentionally not incorporated
>> and intentionally run by a rough consensus process, that line will never
>> be clear-cut.
> 
> 
> The premise that the IETF's lack of incorporation somehow dictates 
> ambiguous lines of authority and/or management makes no sense.  The 
> latter are dictated by clarity of organization structure and crispness 
> of task and personnel management, not legal status.

That's not quite what I was getting at; and I do believe that responsibilities
can and should be well-defined. My point was that, having observed the IETF
and various other organisations with a mixture of professional and volunteer
effort, there is *always* a lack of crispness about what actually gets done
by the volunteers as opposed to staff. That's just a result of human nature
and the motivations and incentives that are at work. I'm not saying it's a
bad thing, either, but it's life.

   Brian

> 
> Incorporated organizations hire unincorporated individuals all the time. 
>   Unincorporated individuals hire Incorporated organizations. 
> Individuals hire individuals.
> 
> Each of these can be done with good or poor definition and operation of 
> lines of responsibility and lines of authority.
> 
> There is no reason the IETF/ISOC relationship necessarily has the 
> ambiguities we've operated with.
> 
> Rather, it is lack of resolve to make things clear and operate 
> accordingly.  We are quite lucky that everyone involved is committed to 
> making things work, but perhaps contrarily that luck serves to obfuscate 
> the problems here.  (It does not help that the IETF's operation came out 
> of the 'daddy pays' funding and operations model, since that created the 
> foundation for this continuing administrative confusion.)
> 
> d/
> 
>