Re: Long-term IETF evolution thoughts

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Jari,
Thank you for doing this.  I think that having community input on our path forward (as well as actually having a thoughtful path forward!) is very important.
My first comment is about the involvement of other communities.  You had mentioned Open Source.  That is great but I feel there are some other communities which are under-represented:
1.  Large enterprise operators / other operators2.  Implementors (other than open source)3.  Startups (I believe this was brought up before)
The reason I believe that these are important is because there has to be a feeback loop between standards, implementation and usage.   All too often, this loop does not exist.  
What sometimes happens is, for example, the "end user" of the standard, say the large enterprise, is shocked to find that a feature they had relied upon is now gone with a new version of a standard.   Of course, they were never at the IETF meetings where this was even discussed five years before.   Otherwise, they would have known or been able to give feedback.  I am actually involved in such a case at this very moment.   Some quite lengthy emails have gone back and forth in the last couple of days between a major U.S. corporation and one WG about changes in an upcoming standard.
The larger question, though, is why such people are not involved.  I suspect, that partially, it is similar to the "tragedy of the commons".   Enterprises feel that this affects many of them, so why should they be the ones paying for someone to go?  Why doesn't someone else?  Of course, when everyone feels this way, then no one goes.  Which is where we find ourselves.  I don't want to get completely distracted by numbers but I would bet I could count the number of large enterprises at the IETF on the fingers of my hand.
This is not a winning proposition for the IETF either.   The more people who actually are directly impacted by the standard are involved in providing comments, the better and longer lasting standards we will create.
Any organism (including the IETF) needs an effective feedback loop to thrive.   I hope we can better involve such people in the IETF.  Thanks,
Nalini ElkinsInside Products, Inc.www.insidethestack.com(831) 659-8360