Re: Questions To Answer

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

jg@pa.dec.com (Jim Gettys) writes:

> I believe legally, the IETF doesn't exist...  Interesting state for an
> influential organization.
> 
> The Internet society CANNOT tell the IETF what to do, as I understand it.
> 
> But the Internet society does provide air cover for IETF activities (e.g.
> legal insurance for IAB and IESG members).  The Internet society can't
> turn out the IAB or IESG.  In fact, the Internet Society was formed when
> the people in the IETF realized that they had to deal with legal protection
> for people working in the IETF.
> 
> A good person to get a brain-dump about how the IETF works and how it might
> be applicable to the Gnome situation is Scott Bradner at Harvard (among
> others, but Scott is the person I would call).  I could make a call
> to Scott to see if we could engage him in this discussion, if people think
> it worth while.
> 
> I think people would say the IETF has power, but it is via moral suasion 
> and consent of the governed.  Anything less than that isn't going to work 
> for the Gnome case.  It is similar enough to the situation with Gnome that
> it is worth looking there closely for possible solutions.

One thing to note is that the IETF primarily generates standards and
that GNOME (as it exists today) primarily generates code. Another
difference is that many IETF standards are largely independent, while
GNOME code is designed to interoperate.

I think that's a very different situation.

 - Maciej