Re: The problem we could solve (re github etc.)

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

--On Wednesday, June 9, 2021 16:27 -0400 "John R. Levine"
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>> 1) Connecting to Ring doorbell on my phone ...
> 
>> Log into my Nest account on the Web, get bounced to Google
>> accounts to log in. Can now view the status of my thermostat
>> but not the status of my doorbell because the whole point
>> here is making people dependent on subscription services. ...
> 
> I have a dandy thermostat powered by two AA batteries that
> makes it warmer in the morning and cooler in the evening.  (We
> don't have central A/C.) It cost under $20.  My father's house
> had a Nest which I found to be worse in every way, harder to
> program, didn't do what I wanted, cost ten times as much.
> Fortunately, I do not live the kind of life in which it would
> be imoportant to change the heat schedule when I am not in the
> house.

So, probably because my circumstances are different, I've got a
few Internet-connected thermostats.  They are connected over
wired Internet, not WiFi, and with PoE, eliminating the need for
AA batteries.  The company that sells them, well, sells them --
without a business model that depends on selling subscriptions
or tracking my behavior to either target me with ads or selling
data about to others.

So, there are choices.

And I have a question: What does this rather long thread
actually have to do with the IETF other than demonstrating that
it would be dumb for our discussions to depend on a providers
who intended to support those discussions by selling
subscriptions and/or tracking user behavior and/or comments?
"Dumb" if only because separating those who would be comfortable
with such arrangements from those who would not would almost
certainly reduce our range of perspectives and participants.

And that distinction ignores whether I should be banned from a
list for some period of time because I suggested that a proposal
--one that I don't think anyone has really made-- would be dumb.

   john