Re: Some thoughts about draft-leiba-3777upd-eligibility-02.txt

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

--On Tuesday, August 21, 2012 15:10 -0700 Bob Hinden
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>> In particular: should bullet 15,2 (and its supporting text
>> elsewhere) be removed?
> 
> 15,2 should probably say "People employed in the IETF
> Secretariat….".  
> 
> I would leave it in.  My thinking is that the IESG, IAB, and
> IAOC have oversight roles over the Secretariat and RFC Editor.
> Having people employed by these organizations be directly
> involved in the selection of the IESG, IAB, and IAOC would be
> odd.

Bob,

There is a slippery slope of trying to make hair-splitting rules
here that I've very reluctant to see the community to start
down.  However, if one were trying to write such rules based on
real risk of inappropriate behavior --rather than leaving those
risks in place and focusing on the appearance of oddity-- it
seems to me that the focus might better be on those who bid on
or obtain short-term contracts to do specific work, such as
specification-writing or implementation, for the IETF.
Precisely because they are short-term (in both the RFP->
Contract Award -> Performance period) and because they
apparently often involve working much more closely with a few
IAOC or IESG members (although I'm not aware of its being done
in recent years, presumably anyone hired by the IAB to write a
workshop report would be in the same category), those
contractors have much more potential for "you scratch my back,
I'll scratch yours" relationships than individuals who are not
subject to direct supervision from the I* leadership.

I want to stress that I'm not aware of even the suspicion of
anything improper occurring in this area in the past.   I
continue to believe that we would be better off with general
guidance that people who are significantly dependent financially
on the IETF via ISOC or equivalent funding for IETF activities
should avoid volunteering for the Nomcom than with trying to
establish rules that are exactly right and avoid all loopholes
in them.  In practice, I'm much more concerned about the
potential for companies (or closely-aligned groups of companies)
to "pack" the Nomcom than I am for abuse from groups of people
who have generally avoided volunteering for the Nomcom in the
past.    But, if we need to try to write precise rules, let's
try to identify and sweep in all of the important cases, not
just obvious ones with bad optics but little practical risk.

best,
   john

     john