Re: [Internetgovtech] US Government response to the European Commission statement

[Andrea Glorioso <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 2:53 PM, Russ White <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> > How many sociologists participate in IETF processes?
> > How many economists?
> > How many scholars of international private / public law?
> > How many psychologists?
> > How many human rights NGOs / activists?
> > How many philosophers?
> > How many anthropologists?
>
> Three points:
>
> I would bet the numbers are higher than you suspect, because engineers tend
> to be a very diverse bunch with a lot of "secondary" interests.


Do we have any kind of data? The only source I am aware of is Jari's
"Document Statistics" page (http://www.arkko.com/tools/docstats.html)


> Beyond this, what specific things would any of these people, working purely
> as economists, etc., bring to the table in building a technical standard?
>

Uhm... for example, help in assessing / modelling the economic impact of a
technical standard?

If the IETF were built on a narrow process designed to allow vendors only to
> participate, then I would agree with you. As it is, the IETF isn't, so we
> must go deeper than, "there's a problem that needs to be fixed," when the
> only definition of the problem I see already agrees with the operating
> principles of the IETF.
>

But the thing is - the Commission is not saying that there is a problem that
needs to be fixed with the IETF. I might have my personal opinion, but
that's
a different matter.

As I wrote elsewhere - if the IETF community concludes that there is no
problem at all in terms of inclusiveness and early engagement, fine. I
don't agree and I don't think it's going to help the Internet in the
long-term,
but hey - we have no power to tell IETF people what to do (and even if
we had, I somehow doubt we'd use it, but I'm sure you'll be to disagree on
this point).


>  But I can't force people. And I don't see how the process can be changed
> in
> any way that would not end up ultimately damaging the technical excellence
> of the final product, nor simply inject more politics into the process than
> already exists.


I'm curious - what's your definition of "politics"?

Best,

Andrea

--
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