Subject: Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and employment status

From: Mark Atwood <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 09:16:41 -0700

Much of what makes the IETF work is how it is very different from other
standards bodies (such as IEEE, ANSI, ISO, NIST, ITU, etc etc).

One key difference is that "groups" do not join the IETF.

Cisco, IBM, MCI, or Linden Lab are not a "members" of the IETF.  No agency
of the US government, or of any other government, is a "member" of the IETF.
 No university, non-profit, PIRG, PAC, or other "concerned citizens group",
is a "member" of the IETF.

Only individual people can be "members" of the IETF.  And "membership" is
mostly defined as "who shows up on the mailing list" and "who shows up at
the meetings".

There have been many cases in the history of the IETF where well known
members who are in the middle of writing standards or of chairing various
important working groups, who have worked for well-known large companies,
will change employers, to other companies, to startups, or to personal
sabbaticals switch around between industry, academia, research, and
government, and this will not, does not, and should not, affect their
position inside the IETF at all.

It appears that sometimes people, inside and outside of the IETF, need to be
reminded of this.

If you want to write standards like the IEEE and ITU do it, you know where
you can find them.

But when you choose to participate in the IETF process, that is how it
works.

And if someone feels that anyone's change in employment status should affect
their standing in any part of the IETF process, that person has missed the
point, and needs to be pointedly reminded of their mistake.

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 13:56:07 -0400

On Tue, Apr 06, 2010 at 09:16:41AM -0700, Mark Atwood wrote:
> Only individual people can be "members" of the IETF.

I thought we didn't have members?  I've always liked to refer to
people doing work here as "participants" for exactly that reason.

A
-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 09:57:05 -0800

> people doing work here as "participants" for exactly that reason.

Right.

Melinda

---

From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:58:31 -0400

> people doing work here as "participants" for exactly that reason.

There are exactly 2003 members of the IETF! ;)

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?viewMembers=&gid=83669

Simon
-- 
NAT64/DNS64 open-source --> http://ecdysis.viagenie.ca
STUN/TURN server        --> http://numb.viagenie.ca
vCard 4.0               --> http://www.vcarddav.org

---

From: Sabahattin Gucukoglu <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 19:23:23 +0100

On 6 Apr 2010, at 17:16, Mark Atwood wrote:
> Only individual people can be "members" of the IETF.  And "membership" is mostly defined as "who shows up on the mailing list" and "who shows up at the meetings".
> 
> There have been many cases in the history of the IETF where well known members who are in the middle of writing standards or of chairing various important working groups, who have worked for well-known large companies, will change employers, to other companies, to startups, or to personal sabbaticals switch around between industry, academia, research, and government, and this will not, does not, and should not, affect their position inside the IETF at all.

I don't see any meaningful relationship between employment status and IETF participation.  That's all.  As a student and as of now unemployed, I have never ceased to be a participant in the IETF, because I have wanted to be a participant in the IETF.  And, as far as possible given the necessities of life, I think that's how it should be.  We are all a bunch of socialists. :-)

In the meantime my next job might well be decided by first my intrigue of networking, and the Internet, and next by my employer's appreciation of these same principles.  Until then, my ongoing certification has a lot to do with networking.  In any event, it is the IETF's wholly open nature that contributed to my involvement and interest in it, and all of the work and people that do it, so that it's very possible that these principles are why I'm in this field at all.

Cheers,
Sabahattin

---

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 15:15:28 -0400

> One key difference is that "groups" do not join the IETF.

That's part of it but IEEE, for example, has some standards groups with
Individual membership (for example, both 802.1 and 802.11) and other
standards groups with entity membership.

It is just as big a difference, for the organizations that you list, that
they have reasonably precise rules for becoming a voting member and
maintaining that status, whether the members are individuals or entities.
For individuals, this usually involves meeting attendance and mandatory
response to letter ballots or the like. My status as a voting member of
802.1 and 802.11 is not affected by changes in my employment or affiliation.
Because voting membership is clearly defined, these organizations can do
things by ballot/voting.

The membership of the IETF or any particular IETF working group is not well
defined so decisions are made by some person or group (WG Chair, AD, IESG)
who is empowered to judge rough consensus.

Thanks,
Donald

> Cisco, IBM, MCI, or Linden Lab are not "members" of the IETF.  No agency of
> the US government, or of any other government, is a "member" of the IETF.
> It appears that sometimes people, inside and outside of the IETF, need to
> be reminded of this.
>
> And if someone feels that anyone's change in employment status should
> affect their standing in any part of the IETF process, that person has
> missed the point, and needs to be pointedly reminded of their mistake.
>

---

From: Dave Aronson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 15:45:46 -0400

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 14:23, Sabahattin Gucukoglu
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I don't see any meaningful relationship between
> employment status and IETF participation.  That's all.

For some of us there is.  I tend to be more active in IETF things
(this list, WGs, etc.) when I'm LOOKING for work!

-Dave

-- 
Dave Aronson - Have Pun, Will Babble | Work: davearonson.com | /\ ASCII
-------------------------------------+ Play: davearonson.net | \/ Ribbon
"Specialization is for insects."     | Life: dare2xl.com     | /\ Campaign
-Robert A. Heinlein                  | Wife: nasjleti.net    | Email<>Web

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 21:51:32 +0200

On 6 apr 2010, at 18:16, Mark Atwood wrote:

> Cisco, IBM, MCI, or Linden Lab are not a "members" of the IETF.  No agency of the US government, or of any other government, is a "member" of the IETF.  No university, non-profit, PIRG, PAC, or other "concerned citizens group", is a "member" of the IETF.

> Only individual people can be "members" of the IETF.  And "membership" is mostly defined as "who shows up on the mailing list" and "who shows up at the meetings".

True enough, but that's only one side of the equation. Cisco, IBM, etc, etc as a rule don't send their people to the IETF to support the greater Minneapolis area economy or other alturistic reasons: they want their people to get stuff done at the IETF. As such, an IETF participant's affiliations have relevance, and should be clear to all.

Considering that, it wouldn't be the worst idea to have everyone post mailing list messages from an employee email address. Then again, I don't need that kind of spam exposure on even more email addresses...

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 14:58:07 -0500

On Apr 6, 2010, at 2:51 PM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

>> Cisco, IBM, MCI, or Linden Lab are not a "members" of the IETF.  No  
>> agency of the US government, or of any other government, is a  
>> "member" of the IETF.  No university, non-profit, PIRG, PAC, or  
>> other "concerned citizens group", is a "member" of the IETF.
>
>> Only individual people can be "members" of the IETF.  And  
>> "membership" is mostly defined as "who shows up on the mailing  
>> list" and "who shows up at the meetings".
>
> True enough, but that's only one side of the equation. Cisco, IBM,  
> etc, etc as a rule don't send their people to the IETF to support  
> the greater Minneapolis area economy or other alturistic reasons:  
> they want their people to get stuff done at the IETF. As such, an  
> IETF participant's affiliations have relevance, and should be clear  
> to all.
>
> Considering that, it wouldn't be the worst idea to have everyone  
> post mailing list messages from an employee email address. Then  
> again, I don't need that kind of spam exposure on even more email  
> addresses...

And considering the crap that many companies use for email servers,  
their message-deletion policies and so on, I expect there are a lot of  
people who wouldn't want that.

Flip side: I could see the IETF requiring all participants use  
ietf.org email addresses hosted on ietf.org servers with ietf.org- 
issued authentication/signature certificates, and quite possibly (with  
some exceptions) restricted delivery to/from non-IETF addresses.

--
Dean

---

From: Hadriel Kaplan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 16:05:13 -0400

Perhaps that would stop all of these "LOOP MAIL DETECTED" messages I keep getting back from kisa.or.kr every time I post to this (particular) email list.
Anyone else getting those?

-hadriel

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Dean Willis
> Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 3:58 PM
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: David Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 13:25:00 -0700 (PDT)

On Tue, 6 Apr 2010, Dean Willis wrote:
 
> Flip side: I could see the IETF requiring all participants use ietf.org email
> addresses hosted on ietf.org servers with ietf.org-issued
> authentication/signature certificates, and quite possibly (with some
> exceptions) restricted delivery to/from non-IETF addresses.

Not a chance ... making volunteers expend more time to interact using an
isolated mail system would be a major impedament to participation. A
good thing(tm) perhaps?

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:09:47 -0700 (PDT)

> Considering that, it wouldn't be the worst idea to have everyone post mailing
> list messages from an employee email address.

Given the stiff competition for "worst idea", I'd agree, but it's a truly
terrible idea nonetheless. The appallingly low quality of the email systems
used by many corporations, nonsensical restrictions and wierd retention
policies, lack of support for incredibly useful functionality like
subaddressing, and numerous other factors make this a complete and total
nonstarter for many.

>  Then again, I don't need that
> kind of spam exposure on even more email addresses...

That barely even makes it onto the issues list.

				Ned

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2010 09:51:45 +1200

>> people doing work here as "participants" for exactly that reason.

Or "contributors" when they contribute and therefore subject themselves
to our IPR rules.

BTW please look at the paragraph headed "Participation" at
http://www.ietf.org/newcomers.html, which I drafted. Do people
agree with that summary?

   Brian

---

From: "Roni Even" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 14:14:35 +0300

If this is true it make me wonder why does the IETF care about the
affiliation of WG chairs and ADs

Roni Even

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Mark
Atwood
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 7:17 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and employment
status

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 09:17:19 -0400

It is a useful fiction, but a fiction nonetheless.

If you work for a public company there is an enormous amount of
process involved when someone speaks for it. Even more so in the case
of government employees. You really do not want to have to go through
that process in order to suggest rewording the description of the
mwagref attribute.

The problem comes when people suggest that the IETF should never
listen to other bodies or other interests under any circumstances
whatsoever. And this is seriously suggested from time to time, most
often when it is obvious that the IETF position is ridiculous and the
only way to avoid facing the fact is to insist that other people's
opinions don't count at all. The proponents of this position do not
really mean 'never' of course, what they mean is that they don't want
to accept the validity of external opinions in the specific instances
where they find them inconvenient, only that would be rather harder to
justify with a straight face.

The first law of the Internet is that you are not in charge, for all
values of 'you'.

And that includes the IETF. The only time when the issue of people
speaking as individuals rather than their companies comes up in
practice is when some folk have got it into their heads that they can
use the IETF to impose their agenda on some other large party. So they
have to insist that the two Microsoft reps are speaking for nobody but
themselves and the fact that they have half a billion customers whose
interests just might be what is really being presented is utterly
irrelevant.

This form of thinking is nowhere near as common in the IETF as it was
a decade ago. Although some of the working groups that have taken that
approach are still in much the same condition now as they were then.
And so now that is one of the factors that tends to drive
fragmentation in the standards world. I note with some amusement that
a body whose founders decided that they just had to work outside IETF
process because the IETF process is too slow and they had to be
finished in a year are still working on their specs five years later.

-- 
-- 
New Website: http://hallambaker.com/
View Quantum of Stupid podcasts, Tuesday and Thursday each week,
http://quantumofstupid.com/

---

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 15:08:54 -0400

> affiliation of WG chairs and ADs

The reason traditionally given that IETF participants in general give their
affiliation is for purposes of individual identification.

The reason there is concern about too many people with the same affiliation
in positions where they judge consensus or the like is to avoid situations
where the organization with which they are affiliated would appear to or
would have the possibility to dominate.

The only hard and fast rules about this in the IETF that I know about are
that nomcom volunteers are required to give their affiliation and no more
than two voting nomcom members can have the same affiliation. Whether this
rule is good or bad is a matter of judgement but it was adopted after
multiple cases where more than two randomly selected voting nomcom members
had the same affiliation and some people felt this created the impression of
dominance.

Thanks,
Donald

>   *From:* [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] *On Behalf
> Of *Mark Atwood
> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 06, 2010 7:17 PM
> *To:* [email-masked]
> *Subject:* Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and employment
> status
>
>
>

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:33:14 +1200

> would have the possibility to dominate.

There is that, and there is the issue of making it harder to "pack"
a WG, so that when a hum or straw poll is taken, a particular company's
preferred choice is over-represented. It's perfectly reasonable for
a WG Chair who is judging a consensus call to reduce the weight of
support for a particular option if s/he *knows* that all its supporters
just happen to work for the same company. Otherwise, the rough consensus
process could be subverted.

We don't always feel comfortable talking about this, but that doesn't
make it untrue.

    Brian
    (whose recent IETF trips have been funded by Huawei, not
     by my university)

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 16:02:57 -0700

From my perspective...

We really want to think of IETF participants as individuals. As Brian says, it is a useful fiction, which allows all sorts of things to be bypassed. I would be truly disappointed if someone I was collaborating with on a draft or was working on a working group with me fundamentally changed their opinion as they changed employers; I would wonder if they were lying to me before the change or after.

The reason we note affiliations, however, at least in my very humble opinion, is for situational awareness. If someone does try to stack a committee or "stuff the ballot box", which has happened, it would be nice to have the information to notice it. Beyond that, it's a potentially-interesting but otherwise useless factoid.

On Apr 8, 2010, at 12:08 PM, Donald Eastlake wrote:

> If this is true it make me wonder why does the IETF care about the affiliation of WG chairs and ADs
> 
> Roni Even
> 
> 
> The reason traditionally given that IETF participants in general give their affiliation is for purposes of individual identification.
> 
> The reason there is concern about too many people with the same affiliation in positions where they judge consensus or the like is to avoid situations where the organization with which they are affiliated would appear to or would have the possibility to dominate.
> 
> The only hard and fast rules about this in the IETF that I know about are that nomcom volunteers are required to give their affiliation and no more than two voting nomcom members can have the same affiliation. Whether this rule is good or bad is a matter of judgement but it was adopted after multiple cases where more than two randomly selected voting nomcom members had the same affiliation and some people felt this created the impression of dominance.
> 
> Thanks,
> Donald 
>  
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Mark Atwood
> Subject: Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and employment status
> 
>  
> Much of what makes the IETF work is how it is very different from other standards bodies (such as IEEE, ANSI, ISO, NIST, ITU, etc etc).
> 
>  
> It appears that sometimes people, inside and outside of the IETF, need to be reminded of this.
> 
>  
> If you want to write standards like the IEEE and ITU do it, you know where you can find them.
> 
>  
> But when you choose to participate in the IETF process, that is how it works.
> 
>  
> And if someone feels that anyone's change in employment status should affect their standing in any part of the IETF process, that person has missed the point, and needs to be pointedly reminded of their mistake.
> 
>  
> 

http://www.ipinc.net/IPv4.GIF

---

From: Stephan Wenger <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:01:10 -0700

Hi Fred,
I¹m not sure whether this (admittedly selective) quote would be fair to your
hypothetical collaborators:

On 4.8.2010 16:02 , "Fred Baker" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> [...] I would be truly disappointed if someone I was collaborating with on a
> draft or was working on a working group with me fundamentally changed their
> opinion as they changed employers; I would wonder if they were lying to me
> before the change or after.
> [...]
> 
Assume there are two proposals on the table, both similar in their technical
merits, but with different ³owners².  The ongoing MPEG-2 preamble
discussions in AVT would be a good example, but I could cite many others,
both inside and outside the IETF.  Now assume further that I would be one of
the key speakers for one proposal, and would decide, for whatever reason, to
join the other proponent company.  Naturally, my expertise would be welcomed
there.  

Would you really expect me not to throw my weight (assuming there were one)
behind the proposal I fought teeth and claws before‹and damage my
relationship with my new employer during the first days on the job?

Further, it could also be that the new employer can convince me that its
proposal is better, even without pulling the loyalty argument, simply
because I now have access to proprietary information from both sides.  That
can easily flip my technical evaluation.  (Arguably something like this has
happened to me in the not too distant past; unrelated to standardization, so
I hope you can still talk to me without wondering whether I would be lying
to you :-).

Note that in neither case I would be lying; I would simply set the emphasis
of my arguments differently.  Namely in support of the business requirements
of the new employer, rather than the business requirements of the old one.
Or, after careful evaluation of information that was previously not
accessible to me.

There are professions where changing horses in mid-course is ethnically
questionable.  People working in those professions usually receive
compensation that make it for them (more or less) easy to survive job
changes.  However, I firmly believe that standardization engineer is not one
of these professions‹certainly not from the typical benefits viewpoint.  We
should not place an expectation, or (worse) a moral obligation to this
extent on the individuals that are‹sometimes against their personal
choice‹affected by a change in affiliation.

Regards,
Stephan

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010 00:22:31 -0500

> Would you really expect me not to throw my weight (assuming there  
> were one) behind the proposal I fought teeth and claws before—and  
> damage my relationship with my new employer during the first days on  
> the job?

Yep. If you did, most of the people I know around the IETF would never  
trust you again. Instead, we'd expect you to convert your new employer  
to your old way of thinking.

Either they're hiring because they think you're smart and they want  
your input, or they're hiring you to shut you up.

Are you getting  a paycheck from your employer, or are you taking a  
bribe? They aren't the same thing.

--
Dean

---

From: Mark Atwood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 22:39:40 -0700

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 10:22 PM, Dean Willis <[email-masked]>wrote:

>  Would you really expect me not to throw my weight (assuming there were
>> one) behind the proposal I fought teeth and claws before—and damage my
> trust you again. Instead, we'd expect you to convert your new employer to
> your old way of thinking.
>

I'm afraid I have to agree with Dean here, which is kind of weird.

When I take a job, my employer knows ahead of time what my technical
opinions are.  That is *what* they hire me for!

I am no employers' whore, no employers' sycophant, and no employers' sancho.
 And I have the (apparently vain) belief that most other people are such as
well.

And if moving over to an new employer gives you "inside" technical knowledge
that their standards proposal is somehow superior in ways that you were not
aware of before, despite being part of the standards process in that
technological space, that means that that company is trying to pull a fast
one, and is playing fast and loose with the "must reveal" rules, and thus is
being more than a little slimy.

---

From: Hadriel Kaplan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010 02:21:18 -0400

Since you guys are affecting my top-of-the-list status for the weekly posting summary, I'm gonna have to jump in... :)

We can all claim our environment doesn't change our views, but that's hard to reconcile with human behavior research.

Regardless, I think even you'd agree that one's views on technical issues can easily change if, for example, one were to switch from working for a customer/user to a manufacturer.

For example, my company has hired numerous folks for their technical competence or experiences from other sectors of the VoIP industry, who changed some of their views on certain technical issues in SIP or RTP once they learned the issues we have to face on a daily basis.  Issues related to interoperability, or hardware vs. software, or scalability and performance - issues that they either didn't take into consideration or had different assumptions for, when they were "users" running the gear or were working in a different SIP "world".  And working on IETF mechanisms is not only about purely technical arguments - it's about pragmatism as well, and what one finds pragmatic can easily change based on the environment.

That's also why I would like the IETF Nomcom to continue considering employers when selecting Area Directors and such - because their employer affects the environment they view technology from.

-hadriel

________________________________
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Mark Atwood
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 1:40 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and employment status

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 10:22 PM, Dean Willis <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:

Would you really expect me not to throw my weight (assuming there were one) behind the proposal I fought teeth and claws before-and damage my relationship with my new employer during the first days on the job?

Yep. If you did, most of the people I know around the IETF would never trust you again. Instead, we'd expect you to convert your new employer to your old way of thinking.

When I take a job, my employer knows ahead of time what my technical opinions are.  That is *what* they hire me for!

I am no employers' whore, no employers' sycophant, and no employers' sancho.  And I have the (apparently vain) belief that most other people are such as well.

And if moving over to an new employer gives you "inside" technical knowledge that their standards proposal is somehow superior in ways that you were not aware of before, despite being part of the standards process in that technological space, that means that that company is trying to pull a fast one, and is playing fast and loose with the "must reveal" rules, and thus is being more than a little slimy.

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010 01:43:49 -0500

On Apr 9, 2010, at 1:21 AM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote:
>
> We can all claim our environment doesn’t change our views, but  
> that’s hard to reconcile with human behavior research.
>
> Regardless, I think even you’d agree that one’s views on technical  
> issues can easily change if, for example, one were to switch from  
> working for a customer/user to a manufacturer.
>
> For example, my company has hired numerous folks for their technical  
> competence or experiences from other sectors of the VoIP industry,  
> who changed some of their views on certain technical issues in SIP  
> or RTP once they learned the issues we have to face on a daily  
> basis.  Issues related to interoperability, or hardware vs.  
> software, or scalability and performance – issues that they either  
> didn’t take into consideration or had different assumptions for,  
> when they were “users” running the gear or were working in a  
> different SIP “world”.  And working on IETF mechanisms is not only  
> about purely technical arguments – it’s about pragmatism as well,  
> and what one finds pragmatic can easily change based on the  
> environment.
>

That's fair. I would expect somebody to learn new things from their  
new employer, and they might well change their minds, over time, about  
positions they once held. Hopefully they'll know why they changed  
their mind, and be willing to share this rationale. I like to think  
I'm willing to change my mind (assuming I can find it to somewhere) if  
I get new information.

But to go 180 degrees overnight just because of an affiliation change  
and instructions from the new boss is not appropriate.

Think of it as "love" versus "labor". IETF work is something you just  
have to love to do well. Going through the motions of love because  
somebody paid you is labor, We even have a good English word for that  
sort of labor: prostitution. I might have an affair with a conflicting  
idea. I might even break off the relationship with my currently-held  
technical position and elope with the new idea. But I sure hope it's  
because I've fallen in love with the new idea, not because somebody  
paid me to cheat on the idea I thought was right.

--
Dean Willis

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010 01:00:07 -0700

Please don't understand me to say that employment doesn't affect views. Time affects views, life affects views, and yes employment affects views. What I was referring to was a sudden change, indicative of toeing a line. I would have a problem with someone that had told me he thought one thing suddenly thinking another and not being able to explain the switch in terms other than "that's my new employer's position".

On Apr 8, 2010, at 11:21 PM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote:

>  
> Since you guys are affecting my top-of-the-list status for the weekly posting summary, I’m gonna have to jump in… J
>  
> We can all claim our environment doesn’t change our views, but that’s hard to reconcile with human behavior research.
>  
> Regardless, I think even you’d agree that one’s views on technical issues can easily change if, for example, one were to switch from working for a customer/user to a manufacturer.
>  
> For example, my company has hired numerous folks for their technical competence or experiences from other sectors of the VoIP industry, who changed some of their views on certain technical issues in SIP or RTP once they learned the issues we have to face on a daily basis.  Issues related to interoperability, or hardware vs. software, or scalability and performance – issues that they either didn’t take into consideration or had different assumptions for, when they were “users” running the gear or were working in a different SIP “world”.  And working on IETF mechanisms is not only about purely technical arguments – it’s about pragmatism as well, and what one finds pragmatic can easily change based on the environment.
>  
> That’s also why I would like the IETF Nomcom to continue considering employers when selecting Area Directors and such – because their employer affects the environment they view technology from.
>  
> -hadriel
>  
> On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 10:22 PM, Dean Willis <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Would you really expect me not to throw my weight (assuming there were one) behind the proposal I fought teeth and claws before—and damage my relationship with my new employer during the first days on the job?
>

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010 08:41:38 -0500

I had a brief chat with Stephan and Fred privately on a variant of this...

I happen to chair three working groups, and my concern with Stephan's 
scenario was not that someone (to use Hadriel's example) goes to work for an 
SBC vendor and is now seeing protocol traces from deployed networks that 
change "the right answer" from proposal A to proposal B.

I know that when I went to work for a network monitor system vendor, I saw 
lots of protocol traces that were amazing - that part makes perfect sense to 
me.

My concern as chair was trying to evaluate technical inputs like

- "I used to back proposal A, but

- after my employment change, I suddenly know reasons why proposal B is 
better, but

- I can't share those reasons with you, because the information is 
proprietary to my new employer"

My experience with appeals to technical information not in evidence has been 
that the IETF does not respond well to those appeals.

As recently as yesterday, Hadriel told me "I can't say much about that, 
because we're not under NDA, *but what I can tell you is ...*". I think what 
I'm reacting to, is what Bernard Aboba (in this case) and I would need to do 
as chairs, if Hadriel had said "I can't say much about that, because the 
information is proprietary, but I was wrong before and now I'm right". At a 
minimum, I'd HOPE that any declaration of working group consensus based on 
participants who can't tell us why the consensus is technically correct, 
would be appealed.

If I'm misunderstanding Stephan's scenario, I apologize, and look forward to 
better understanding your point of view.

Thanks,

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Fred Baker
To: Hadriel Kaplan
Cc: Mark Atwood ; [email-masked]
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 3:00 AM
Subject: Re: Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and 
employmentstatus

Please don't understand me to say that employment doesn't affect views. Time 
affects views, life affects views, and yes employment affects views. What I 
was referring to was a sudden change, indicative of toeing a line. I would 
have a problem with someone that had told me he thought one thing suddenly 
thinking another and not being able to explain the switch in terms other 
than "that's my new employer's position".

---

From: todd glassey <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:13:01 -0700

On 4/8/2010 10:22 PM, Dean Willis wrote:
> Either they're hiring because they think you're smart and they want your
> input, or they're hiring you to shut you up.
> 

That's the point. The IETF has functionally become a covert arena where
corporate entities  expand technology to bolster their market dominance,
and since virtually all of us employed in the IT or
infrastructure/server world are tied to LAN protocols. As such the IETF
is functionally inextricably tied to our employers and their business,
meaning that we do in fact represent the interests of our employers when
we participate inside the IETF, even if our Employers are Academic in
nature.

Take CISCO, JUNIPER, QUALCOMM and many many others for instance. Could
any of these entities survive without the service that the IETF provided
and continues to provide to them?

I think the answer is pretty obvious and an Court who looked at the
technologies and their value in the business development of
infrastructure would see the "lies put forth" in the public statement by
IETF Management that the IETF only represents individuals.

In fact the IETF of today only represents entities with enough money to
send people to meetings and to pay for their staff's hours spent
interacting with the IETF and in vetting the IETF's designs meaning
genesis is occurring based on that effort.

This also opens the can of worms of litigation against the IETF and WG
members for their actions in either actively blocking or damaging
initiatives in place, since neither are "Open and Fair" meaning that the
IETF also is liable there IMHO.

Just my two cents...

Todd Glassey

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 20:28:39 -0400

I am not at all sure it helps.

Remember that from time to time we see 'drive by' campaigns
originating from the FSF which amount to nothing more than someone has
said something to RMS that has set him off on a rant and told his
minions to fire off objections.

So the objections clearly have a single source, but the objectors have
different employers. If the rants were not so ill-informed, they might
well be influential.

IETF process does make it very easy to block a proposal. If what the
entity attempting to pack a meeting is doing is trying to block
something, it is not difficult for them to win if they are blocking in
the WG itself.

Another area where we do have difficulty is where there is a proposal
that is by intention designed to damage the interests of some party.
For example, spam reduction measures. If you have a genuinely open
consensus process then the spammers have an input to the process as
well.

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 7:02 PM, Fred Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:
> From my perspective...
> We really want to think of IETF participants as individuals. As Brian says,
> it is a useful fiction, which allows all sorts of things to be bypassed. I
> would be truly disappointed if someone I was collaborating with on a draft
> or was working on a working group with me fundamentally changed their
> The reason we note affiliations, however, at least in my very humble
> opinion, is for situational awareness. If someone does try to stack a
> committee or "stuff the ballot box", which has happened, it would be nice to
> have the information to notice it. Beyond that, it's a
> potentially-interesting but otherwise useless factoid.
>
>> Mark Atwood

---

From: "Tom.Petch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 20:19:20 +0200

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian E Carpenter" <[email-masked]>
To: "Melinda Shore" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 11:51 PM
Subject: Re: Public musing on the nature of IETF membership and employmentstatus

> http://www.ietf.org/newcomers.html, which I drafted. Do people

no:-(

I think that the information is there but in the wrong order.  Were I new, I
would probably disconnect after the first paragraph; who cares about the
structure (at least at this stage)?

Tom Petch