Subject: Re: IETF Adelaide and interim meetings for APPS WGs

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 20:37:49 -0700 (MST)

> From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>

> ...
> > I'm not a lawyer, but that sounds like it might conflict with the U.S.
> > Constitution's provisions concerning freedom of assembly.
>
> (a) The U.S. constitution applies to the Federal government (and sometimes to 
> the state governments); it does not apply to private groups.

How arms-length is the connection between the IETF and the Federal
government?  No more NFS money, but what about the ITU entanglements?
Could Civil Service employees find it hard to get travel requests approved
for attending meetings of an outfit that gets carried away in its rules
and regulations on who can talk to whom?

> (b) No one ever said that these folks can't meet; they just can't do it under 
> the imprimatur of the IETF. 

I read the dictum as stronger than that.  Didn't it say something
about prohibiting meetings that are nominally not WG meetings for
the purpose of subverting RFC 2418?  That's why I quoted

}                                                 or otherwise 
}   labelled to distinguish them from official working group meetings.

That's the part that I don't see as enforcable or wise, although I
sympathize with the motivation.

> ...
> The point is that some things are better accomplished in a high-bandwidth 
> environment.  

Yes, that's often true, but the talk of "high-bandwidth" has always been
exaggerated.  As I've said, I've never attended an IETF meeting, but
I've read an awful lot of minutes over the last >dozen years.  I haven't
read many that showed evidence effective use of that high bandwidth.
(Perhaps I'm too unimpressed by simply letting people have their say
before continuing with what was inevitable.)

> >                                                      ...   If the IETF
> > did honestly aspire to be an international organization, it would need
> > the characteristics of the ITU (e.g. translators and high prices for
> > documents). ...

> I'm afraid I don't follow the logic of your penultimate sententce.  The 
> current schedule has about 1 meeting out of 3 outside of North America.

The locations of meetings do not make the IETF international any more than
Congressional junkets do the same for Congress.  (That there is no need
to specify which congress I'm talking about is emblematic of the reality
that contradicts the politically correct posturing.)

The U.N. and the ITU are international organizations.  I've attended
as many meetings of them as of the IETF, so maybe my distinct
impression that they do things differently than the IETF is mistaken.
Let's see, how many RFC's are not in English?  How many WG meetings
or mailinglists?

That the IETF is de facto an U.S. outfit is not by itself a bad thing.
There are and for centuries have been many organizations in many places
that are not really international, but that welcome distant participants.
It is bad to refuse to call a "digging implement adapted for being pushed
into the ground with the foot" a spade.

] From [email-masked] Mon Feb 14 18:54:53 2000

]                                                        ...   Yes, we do
] most of our work on mailing lists, and we check meeting consensus on
] mailing lists before declaring it sealed in blood. But Face to Face
] meetings have always been places where high bandwidth discussions take
] place to clarify and progress work which is also being done on the mailing
] list. They are official meetings.

"High-bandwidth" does not need official sanction.  You can have productive
technical discussions without any official sanction, and usually better
without the burdens of officialness.  What is the difference between
"official but nothing is signed in blood" and "where things are signed in
blood"?  If nothing can be finally decided (i.e. signed in blood), what
is the substance, of "official" besides ensuring that accountants accept
expense reports?

] So, by the way, are interim meetings, under RFC 2418. We could discuss
] major initiatives which have made effective use of them  the entire SNMP
] development, the development of RSVP and Diff-serv, the development of
] OSPF, and many more. PPP development has happened as much at the
] interoperability workshops held by Pac Bell and the PPP Consortium as they
] have at IETF meetings.

Those are good examples of the distinction between engineering and official
meetings.  The PPP development I saw at Pac Bell's San Ramon facility was
a matter individuals talking semi-privately.  The semi-formal discussions
at the ends of the days announced but did not decide anything.  Note also
that at least some of those meetings did not have any IETF sanction.

I wonder if the uglier parts of the SNMP saga would not have come out far
better without one or two of the official IETF WG meetings.

]                                                           ...  Declaring an
] interim meeting for the purpose of avoiding a plenary meeting is a slap in
] the face ...

That's certainly true, but I don't see how you're going to fix that problem
without killing the mailinglists.  Working groups that fail to have quorums
at official meetings can and will still get work done.  As I know you know
too well, individuals will meet with or without IETF sanction, write
drafts, and the WG can and will progress (or not) regardless.

]                                         ...  but we have always worked on
] an ethic that says "if I am contributing to the work, the meeting must
] occasionally be near me."

That's not bad, especially for those with deep corporate or government
pockets to pay for travel.  It is good politics and fun.  However, very
little technical work is ever done in any committee meeting of a few hours,
no matter where it is held or with what official sanction.

] One sixth or more of our contributors come from Europe. A relatively small
] contingent comes from the South Pacific. Quite a large percentage come from
] North America. Hence, we put about one meeting in six in Europe and most of
] our meetings in North America. Is it not fair to put one meeting in 47 in
] the South Pacific? And why is it not an affront to those who have
] faithfully come from there, have contributed and chaired working groups
] from there, to complain about doing once what they have been doing for over
] a decade?

It's impossible to disagree with that.  I assume it's intended to
show that the IETF is an "international organization," but it does
not convince me.

Speaking of slaps in faces, I wonder if I were not a U.S. citizen if I
wouldn't feel some sting from the continual claims by the IETF that it is
an international organzation.  For example, how many AD's and IAB members
have not been U.S. residents?  Of those few that haven't been, how many
could not have "passed" as U.S. residents?--at least in email, none that
I can recall.  (I hope they'll they'll take that as a compliment on their
social skills instead of an affront to their national pride.)

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Keith McCloghrie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:34:38 -0800 (PST)

> That the IETF is de facto an U.S. outfit is not by itself a bad thing.

You seem to be making the assumption that the English language is the
property of the USA.  Perhaps, you have forgotten that the English
language was spoken in a quite a lot of the world before the USA existed.

Keith.

---

From: Keith McCloghrie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:34:38 -0800 (PST)

Keith.

---

From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 09:48:15 -0500

From: Keith McCloghrie <[email-masked]>
   Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 21:34:38 -0800 (PST)

For better or worse (and I'm sure I'm going to piss off some number of
Frenchmen and Quebecois by saying this), English has become the Lingua
Franca of the Internet.

I was amazed when I first found out about the attitudes of a number of
non-native-English-speaking programmers who consider it bad programming
style to write use non-English variables, comments, or function names in
their programs.  This was for maintainability reasons.  Even if a German
were maintaining a program today, a year from now perhaps someone from
the Netherlands or Belgium might need to pick and understand the
software project.  While this is attitude is most prevalent in the Open
Source community, it even applies to some (many?) large commercial
programming shops.  (I first heard about this from a friend of mine who
works for SAP AG, who pointed out that they had programmers from all
over Europe.)

This phenomenon is of course not unique to programming.  I recall
reading about some E.C. meetings where the committee members waived
translation services and elected to conduct their exclusively in some
common language, often English, simply to save money and because it's
much less awkward than having to edit a document in three different
languages simultaneously.  (Presumably they would edit it once in
English, and once the master document was agreed to, they would then
translate it to other languages.)

Perhaps it's not fair that English has won this privileged place, and
not some other language, like French, or Esparanto.  Speaking selfishly,
it means that I never have a chance to practice my (by now very rusty)
six years of Spanish that I took in high school and college.  But if I
had access to the source code of the universe and could give it a quick
edit and recompile, I'd make many other changes, including outlawing
software patents and #ifdef'ing out the MPAA.  But fortunately or
unfortunately, this is not one of our options for making changes in the
world.  :-)

							- Ted

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From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 09:48:15 -0500

- Ted

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 09:20:25 -0600

Vern,

The IETF has no dependency of any kind on any government and as you yourself
observed it does its decision taking in cyberspace, not geographical space.
It is as international as any organization I have ever known, and I spent more 
20 years working for an international treaty organisation.

I agree with Fred. Objecting to crossing the Pacific once in 47 meetings
is not right. (Not talking about you personally of course.)

   Brian

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 09:20:25 -0600

Vern,

   Brian

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From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 08:33:57 +0000

>and regulations on who can talk to whom?

No.  Been there, done that.  Lots of pain being part of the US Civil Service,
but your specific speculation isn't reality. 

Ran
[email-masked]

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From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 08:33:57 +0000

Ran
[email-masked]