Subject: RE: Response to WG last call, Problem Statement: Thoughts on the IETF problem statement

From: Robert Snively <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:07:09 -0800

Alex,

No matter how you count it, it costs real money to participate
in IETF.  At a minimum, it costs $100 for a used computer and
$20/month for an internet connection, plus a roof and electricity.

In most cases, organizations are also funding the time of
their participants, their travels to the IETF meetings, and
the meeting fees (which are higher in IETF than for most
other SDOs).  IETF chooses to pretend that corporate
sponsorship is not part of the activity.

As an example of a successful standards organization that
has sliding fees, one can consider IEEE.  To participate in
IEEE standards voting, individuals pay $35/yr to join the standards
organization
and from $25 to $147/yr to join the IEEE, based on location
and status.  One must also request membership in the balloting
pool. 

INCITS charges $800/yr per member organization for
2 participants and 2 free participants in each subcommittee. 
Membership also entails periodic meeting attendance and
voting in letter ballots.

Neither IEEE nor INCITS prohibit non-paying people from
participating and contributing, just from voting.
 
None of these fees are prohibitive compared with the other
costs of participation, but these fees are sufficient to 
formalize the separation between those who are members
and those who participate as a matter of
less serious interest or as a social activity.

Having a defined membership and voting pool, together with a formalized
and documented voting system, eliminates a significant amount
of the technical churn present in IETF activities.  Decisions are
made, agreed upon, documented, and the organization moves on.
That does not prevent hot-blooded flamewars from occurring, but
it provides a formal mechanism to resolve them, and if necessary,
re-open them.

I believe a careful review of the minutes of INCITS and IEEE
organizations would not reveal any unexpected problems in the membership
and voting process.  Robert's Rules of Order have been relatively
successful as a guide to fairness and process for both chairs and
participants since about 1876.

Such formalization also provides for effective liaison and allows
the technical excellence of the product (a standard) to be under control of
the individual working group.  Technical review can then be
broadened into the public at large as well as to other interested
working groups, reducing the technical review load on the 
directors of the organization.

The IETF model is the one that is really experimental.  It can be
very successful among a bounded group of like-minded people, but
has already shown significant problems in scalability.  

I hope that I have properly addressed your questions.

Bob

> Robert,
> 
> 	Is there an example of a successful SDO that guarantees open
> and fair access to all interested participants but does not require
> membership fees? Or are you implying that those who cannot afford
> membership fees cannot be interested enough?
> 
> 	IETF does not require fees for low-level members that do not
> want to get elected to IESG positions and such. This is both good
> (more good engineers can participate) and bad (lack of money and
> commitments). I do not know of any comparable SDO that does not have
> fees or similar entry barriers. Do you?
> 
> 	IETF membership policies are in the root of many of not most
> IETF problems. Are there real-world examples where similar policies do
> not cause the problems we face? Or are we in the unchartered
> territory here?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Alex.
>

---

From: Alex Rousskov <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 14:09:26 -0700 (MST)

On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Robert Snively wrote:

> No matter how you count it, it costs real money to participate in
> IETF.  At a minimum, it costs $100 for a used computer and $20/month
> for an internet connection, plus a roof and electricity.

It costs real money (or their equivalent) to live, of course.

> None of these fees are prohibitive compared with the other costs of
> participation, but these fees are sufficient to formalize the
> separation between those who are members and those who participate
> as a matter of less serious interest or as a social activity.

The above statement sounds like a contradiction to me. If we assume it
costs a lot more to participate than the official fee, the official
fee becomes irrelevant. In other words, IETF fee structure is already
close to the others you mention, without the money-collecting
overheads; it already provides the separation you desire.  However,
let's ignore that contradiction for now. There are two related
questions then:
  - Is formal separation required to achieve quality standards?
    What makes it an essential feature?
  - Are official fees the best way to achieve formal separation?
    Do IETF mailing lists provide enough formal separation?

> Having a defined membership and voting pool, together with a
> formalized and documented voting system, eliminates a significant
> amount of the technical churn present in IETF activities.

What mechanism do IEEE and other cheap SDOs have from preventing, say,
Cisco or Microsoft from registering thousands of voting members to
control a given working group? They certainly have the resources
required. What protects minority in a voting-based SDO? Some kind of
count-based (rather than portion-based) appeal process?

I believe that IETF essentially has formal membership (mailing lists
are rosters). What it does not have is formal commitments. I know W3C
has commitments, but W3C membership is not affordable and not tailored
to individuals. What about IEEE and INCITS? Do they require
time/effort commitment from their members?

You have mentioned several distinct areas of change:
	- formal membership
	- voting procedures
	- working group control

Is it possible for you to indicate the relative importance of those?
For example, if we manage to address working group control issues
without formal membership and voting, do you think we can get close
enough to your ideal?

Thank you,

Alex.

P.S. My questions is an attempt to separate important/essential
     "ideal" SDO properties from "common" SDO properties so that we
     can ignore marketing/perception issues and do a focused
     comparison with IETF.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:16:20 -0500

Please keep in mind that the document under discussion is a problem
description only, and that proposed solutions are out of scope for
this document in particular and the working group in general.

Thanks,

Melinda

---

From: mark seery <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:50:17 -0500 (EST)

---- Alex Rousskov <[email-masked]> wrote:

><snip> 

Hi Alex, given Melinda's requests to focus on problems and not solutions, I'll limit my response to the above snip, and perhaps we can discuss the mechanisms of other bodies at another time.

So in brief, from some small participation at say 802, I do find the processes add to a sense of fairness and dilligence, and just generally make me feel more comfortable with the procedure. They do not guarantee quality or timeliness though - those are a separate issues. They do not guarantee either that a small set of indivduals will not dominate a group, but at least there is a sense there is a process to deal with that.

Typically I feel like standards bodies do really good quality work when they are building standards for a problem domain they know well, and a customer set they know well. In all bodies, when groups deviate from this, you get tension between the way the group would have traditionally solved a problem, and the way the new customer set thinks they want the problem solved; and sometimes it is just a new type of problem that the existing technology architectures do not adapt to. What you see then is the desire to meet the requirements of new customer set, ambiguity about how to solve the problem, luke warm support for the result, and questions of quality arise. That observation leads to the unpleasant discussion of mission, but it could similarly lead to simply a discussion of the problems of scaling an organization to address a growing number of areas.

To me there is a strong link between timeliness and scope, and timeliness and reliance on an external body, as in all engineering projects, but that's off into the solution universe.

Hope this helps to differentiate between some of purported benefits and realities.

---

From: Alex Rousskov <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:02:28 -0700 (MST)

> this document in particular and the working group in general.

I do. I do not think I proposed any solution in this context. The bulk
of Robert's e-mail was also about problems and comparison with other
SDOs, which seems to be in scope.

Thanks,

Alex.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 17:11:55 -0500

> SDOs, which seems to be in scope.

Right you are.  I apologize for not being clearer; my note was intended
as a general reminder rather than being directed at an individual.

Melinda