Re: [Ietf-hub-boston] The October health of the IETF discussion (was: Re: Future meeting schedule)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Tuesday, November 5, 2019 12:59 -0500 Dave Lawrence
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> John C Klensin writes:
>> Anyway, the discussion was interesting and, at least to me,
>> helpful, informative, and helped me calibrate some of my
>> thinking on the subject.  Sorry you missed it.
> 
> I do appreciate very much the summary that you gave, thank
> you.  I might pick your brain about it more in the near
> future, especially depending on the outcome of the current
> round of nomcom.

At your convenience although, depending on that outcome and its
aftermath, further discussion may require lubrication with an
appropriate adult beverage.

For context, although the story is much longer, I've started
looking for options to move internationalization work out of the
IETF --which increasingly seems unable and/or unwilling to do
it, much less do it well-- and into some international forum
with a clear mandate to do the work and the ability to get (and
evaluate) the right expert involvement.  Unless someone comes up
with a better idea (and much of what the IETF has been dropping
the ball on involves issues too far down the stack to be
appropriate for W3C even if they were willing to take it on),
that probably means some combination of UNESCO and ITU.  That
is, to me, terrifying for two reasons.  First, if anyone had
suggested a decade or two ago that I'd be thinking about such a
thing, I would have been more astonished than anyone else.
Second, it would move the IETF one step closer to being
perceived of by some important actors as focusing on some narrow
issues but being increasingly irrelevant to issues that are
important to the global Internet community.

To put it mildly, not good.  But in many respects, just another
symptom of the issues that motivated me to open up the broader
discussion.

best,
   john