Re: [Iasa20] 6635bis

[Bob Hinden <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

A few comments on this thread.

The RFC Editor services are broken into several parts.  There is the RFC Editor, a person doing that job with independent authority, and the Production Center where the actual editing, document production, online publication, and archiving is done.

The Production Center work is done by many people with a range of skills, full and part time editors, managers, software development, and IT support.  It’s large enough that it need staff services like HR.   People doing that job require specific training how RFCs are produced, the rules for what they look like, and the specific tools that they use to do their job.  I am probably understating this.

In my direct experience having been very involved in the hiring of two RFC Editors and the transition of this work from ISI, its very specialized.  We typically don’t get a lot of qualified bidders.   

The individual fulfilling the RFC Editor job could be a contractor or direct employee, but the kind of person who is capable of doing that job that you want to hire, will have a strong opinion which form of employment they will want.   The leverage is with the candidate, not the LLC.

Given the size and complexity of the Production Center activity, it would be a major undertaking to bring into the LLC.  The LLC would have to hire and train people capable of doing the work, provide them benefits, have managers to mange them, provide employee services for them, etc., etc.   We were very fortunate in the move from ISI that several of the key personal moved with the work.  It’s not clear that would happen again.

I think that if the LLC is seriously thinking of moving the Production Center activity inside of the IETF LLC, they don’t understand this activity.   As others have said, it would grow the amount of staff needed by the LLC significantly and turn it into a medium size company with all that entails.

Bob