Re: Comments on Composition and Comportment of the IETF Nominating Committee draft

Hi Dan, Brian, John,
At 10:22 PM 25-07-2026, Dan Harkins wrote:
>   OK, a couple of things....
>
>   1. who is instigating this whole thing? Notice how she doesn't 
> have a corporate
>      funder? (unless there's some connection in the NGO money 
> laundering complex,
>      and please disclose if so).
>
>   2. we constantly praise our corporate backers for funding the 
> IETF-- "thank you
>      to our gold sponsors!" and "thank you to our diversity and 
> inclusion sponsors"
>      and "thank you to our other sponsors". So is this part of the 
> (root of the)
>      problem? Shall we just renounce this "supply chain" and hope 
> the IETF can
>      continue?

I'll comment on the second point.

The revenue from meetings in 2023 was $2.9 million.  The total 
expenses were $11.2 million.  The amount from the corporate sponsors 
would be around $1.3 million.  The activities which the IETF does 
could continue without the corporate sponsorship.  They would have to 
be a decrease in expenses.  The organization would not be able to 
fund its activities without the yearly donation from the Internet Society.

This is the input to the committee which nominated people in 2022: 
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/GYjMF2KfB3XUqLAtzSrkUFS65Q4/ 
A company has an incentive to have its employees included in the 
input if the organization's decisions have some influence on the 
products/services which the company builds.  It may find ways to 
increase the chances of one or two employees being selected (the 
selection is random and can be publicly verified).  The company could 
also decide to improve its optimization for whatever the selection 
rules require.

I don't see anyone asking the organization to ignore or forget people 
who could be part of the input to the committee.  It would be 
somewhat unrealistic to expect the standards development to work in 
the same manner as it does now if it were to ignore of forget people.

At 02:40 PM 07-07-2026, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>I think the root of the problem is deeper - it lies within the corporate
>culture of the networking part of the IT industry. Who gets funded 
>to participate
>in the IETF and to travel to meetings? Of course we should do what we can to
>make the IETF attractive to everybody - maybe ISOC could run a campaign - but
>the problem is definitely in the "supply chain".

There was an email which was sent to this list in 2013. One of the 
suggestions was for each of the confirming bodies to make a statement 
that it would not confirm a slate unless there was an explanation as 
to why the slate was the way it was.  Do the persons who were listed 
in that letter view an Internet Society marketing campaign as an 
effective way to bring any change to the composition of the IESG?

Regards,
S. Moonesamy