Re: [rtcweb] Why voting is not a viable process for the IETF (Was: Last day for any additional Video Codec Selection alternatives )

[SM <[e-mail]>]

At 13:03 28-11-2013, Emil Ivov wrote:
>Exactly the kind of questions that the IETF does NOT handle.

In my humble opinion it does.

>It has to be clear in advance that voting is a possible outcome of 
>all discussions. It has to be clear who will be allowed to vote and, 
>just as importantly, who won't be. A good practice would be to then 
>contact potentially interested parties and inform them of the 
>process and voting conditions so that they can choose to get 
>involved and make sure they satisfy those conditions.

There are some details in the message at 
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rtcweb/current/msg09909.html 
about the eligibility rules.  I think that I may be eligible but I am not sure.

>The rules that are currently being presented are EXPLICITLY 
>PREVENTING people from getting involved in the process and becoming 
>a part of the vote from now on. This is such a glaring deficiency 
>that I am amazed we are still discussing the option.

It is to prevent breaking the rules to gain unfair advantage. :-)

>The rules that have been presented basically sound like: "here are 
>the people that we think will produce the result we are looking for"

I have not looked into the details to take a guess about whether it 
is possible to predict the outcome.

Several decision-making alternatives have been put before this 
working group.  It seems that there has been difficulty getting 
people to agree on how to find a way to agree.  There isn't much an 
Area Director or a Working Group can do in those circumstances.

At 13:40 28-11-2013, Bernard Aboba wrote:
>So I fail to see how the outcome of this proposed vote could be 
>expected to convince someone who is concerned about legal/IPR issues 
>that their concerns have been addressed.  Is legal counsel expected 
>to view the outcome and say "I had concerns relating to the 
>IPR/licensing risks of <insert codec here> but now that the IETF 
>RTCWEB WG has concluded its voting process, I realize that my 
>concerns were merely the invention of an over-active legal mind!"

I would not conclude that there isn't any IPR issue based on the 
conclusion of the decision process.  I am not keen about voting as it 
can be a problem in future.

>[BA] I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED that such a thing could be going on here!
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME

This is a moment of humor at in that video. :-)

At 14:06 28-11-2013, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
>Standards are created such that system are able to interoperate with
>each other. Deciding to avoid the decision for an MTI and thus
>creating non-interoperable rtcweb systems is giving up on
>standardising interoperability. IMO that is very much a technical
>question.

Yes.

Regards,
-sm