Re: on "positive" organizational culture

[Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, Mar 08, 2020 at 10:04:12PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
> For instance, if a proposal is
> motivated by a desire to use the standards process to gain an unfair
> technical advantage over competitors, it almost always will do some harm to
> Internet users - and that harm may be easier to demonstrate than the motive.

I think this argument works only in simple, "evil" cases.
In reality today, i observe quite the opposite: 

I think one can understand the competitive grounding of a lot of technical
positions and in many cases, proponent can be quite open about it (*).

Where we do get problem is when the "harm to the internet user"
argument is (IMHO) intelligently "abused". Especially when in one
option the harm comes through a particular standard and then the
opposing option takes that harm out of the standard but creates
more harm outside of the scope that the IETF can influence and
reduces the business of the opposing option that maybe ultimately
would have greated more ability for the IETF to limit and control 
the harm.

> But sometimes inappropriate motive does rear its ugly head.

> IMO current IETF processes are not well-designed to deal with these cases, but I'm not
> sure what remedy to recommend.

In the cases i am thinking of, the best solution may be not to permit
only one standard enforced by the side that manages to engineer the
rough mayority, but also for the otherwise oppressed rough minority.
Aka: loosen up on the ability of a rough mayority to inhibit options
that do not serve their commercial interests.

> I've also seen cases (both inside and outside of IETF) in which a demand for
> positivity has been deliberately used to suppress input that those in
> leadership positions didn't want to have aired.

Something like you pick the one word in an opposing view that can be misconstrued
to be marginally offensive or rude and then you shift the discussion to
one of pure language, not answering to the technical concern ?

That is at least what i have seen happening, and only in one
case i remember did this result in some serious backslash, aka: we are
IMHO definitely living in a time of PC language as a weapon).

> Bottom line: I believe that for IETF to be able to do its job well,
> transparency must be more important than a vague notion of positivity.

Indeed. Here was my personal (*) example how one can be open
about commercial positions:

In Multicast we have this complex protocol IGMPv3 (2000). 10 years
later a new company and propose a simplified version. Whereupon
i stood up in WG and said that this may be technically interesting,
but creates even more new work for companies that have implemented
the complex version, and makes only market entrance for new companies
easer, effectively shifting the cost away from the proponents to their
competitors. 

I have seen very little open discussion about commercial positions
though over the years, i think more would be helpfull.

Cheers
    Toerless