Re: Montevideo statement

[Jari Arkko <[e-mail]>]

Dave,

> The fact that you had to reach back 2.5 years, to a frankly rather obscure document that came from the IAB and not the broader IETF, demonstrates my point that we lacked meaningful context 

You asked for context and I provided a context. We can certainly debate how meaningful it is. There are obvious arguments that we can make against its meaningfulness. But I disagree with your characterisation of the most recent RFC (6020) on topic from the organisation that in the IETF ecosystem has IANA oversight in its charter (per RFC 2580, a BCP) as "obscure". In any case I don't want to argue too much, because I _do_ agree with your larger points:

> They don't set work agendas. They don't control overall budgets.  They don't hire and fire people.  For almost all of the formal IETF 'decisions' they participate in, it is with exactly one vote in a group, and not more authority than that.
...
> IETF leaders are best viewed as facilitators, rather than leaders.  They do huge amounts of organizing, coordinating, interfacing, in the classic style of the cliche'd 'shepherding cats'.

Although I would claim that while there is no traditional "leading" at the IETF, I do think that IETF facilitators do occasionally lead in the sense of suggesting paths forward, identifying potential challenges, etc.

And I of course would love to have this:

> We need to find some sort of language that gives constructive guidance and constraint about public representations of the IETF, by our 'leaders'.

Jari