Subject: Internationalization

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2019 12:11:05 -0400

Following Brian's lead about trying to introduce a topic here
that I believe wou, in a different year and under other
circumstances, been worth mic time and plenary discussion.
Today that time is probably best saved for a different
discussion.
  
The IETF has a so-called internationalization ("i18n") problem.
One version of that problem is that we have general consensus
that the isssues are important if we care about a global
Internet serving a very broad range of people ... and most of us
seem to believe that.  A BoF was held here a year ago.  It
concluded that a directorate would help move issues and
documents forward.  It has, but not much. Getting document
reviews there has been painful; getting the real interactions
among people with multiple types of expertise (absolutely
critical for this work because  there isn't anyone knows who
quite enough by themselves) even more difficult.  I hope we will
still be able to move a few clarifying documents forward, but
more fundamental work eems impossible.
 
sI think that leaves us with a pair of bad choices.  One is to
continue to do nothing and wait until some other body says "the
IETF is incompetent or does not care, so we should take this
over".   We probably wouldn't like some of the organizations who
might take that position taking over our work.   The other is to
make an effort to try to figure out how to place it.

How does the community -- and particularly the IAB and IESG --
feel about that and do we even have the resources and energy to
pursue the second course as an IETF effort rather than either
leaving it to some of us to do it as individuals or default to
the first option?  The latter two choices might not be much
different from each other in practice.

thanks,
   john