gendispatch F. Gont
Internet-Draft SI6 Networks
Intended status: Informational K. Moore
Expires: August 26, 2021 Network Heretics
February 22, 2021
Diversity and Inclusiveness in the IETF
draft-gont-diversity-analysis-00
Abstract
This document discusses a number of structural issues that currently
hinders diversity and inclusiveness in the IETF. The issues
discussed in this document are non-exhaustive, but still provide a
good starting point for the IETF to establish a more comprehensive
agenda to foster diversity and inclusiveness.
Status of This Memo
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provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on August 26, 2021.
Copyright Notice
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Perceived Return of Investment (ROI) . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Effects of Current Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6. Diversity in IETF groups and leadership roles . . . . . . . . 5
6.1. IESG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6.2. WG Chairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6.3. NOMCOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8. Difficulty in Joining the IETF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9. Economic Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
10. Educational Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
11. Cultural Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
11.1. Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
11.2. Using email effectively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
11.3. Comfort zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
12. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
13. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
14. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
15. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1. DISCLAIMER
For the most part, many of the topics discussed in this document are
the result of on-list and off-list conversations with a number of
IETF participants, and are based personal experiences of said group
of colleagues, and what such group believes are some of the
structural problems hindering diversity in the IETF.
As such, it is very likely (and possibly guaranteed!) that there are
aspects that are partially (or even totally!) overlooked. If you
feel that is the case, please do contact the authors, and feel free
to educate us on what we may have missed. The authors will be happy
to incorporate co-authors where needed, include ideas from others
while giving due credit, or even include ideas while anonymizing the
source or author of the proposal.
Please refer to Section 3 regarding the terminology employed
throughout this document.
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2. Introduction
This document tries to raise a number of structural issues that
currently hinders diversity and inclusiveness in the IETF. The
issues discussed in this document are non-exhaustive, but still
provide a good starting point for the IETF to establish a more
comprehensive agenda for the IETF to address the issue of diversity
and inclusiveness.
We have grouped structural issues in these categories:
o Perceived Return of Investment (ROI) (see Section 4)
o Effects of Current Participation (see Section 5)
o Diversity in IETF groups and leadership roles (see Section 6)
o Processes (see Section 7)
o Difficulty in Joining the IETF (see Section 8)
o Economic Constraints (see Section 9)
o Educational Constraints (see Section 10)
o Cultural Issues (see Section 11)
3. Terminology
Throughout this document, whenever we refer to "diversity" or
"inclusiveness" we imply including or involving people of:
o a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds
o different genders
o different sexual orientations
o different countries and regions
o different types of organizations (companies, non-profits, etc.)
The above list is non-exhaustive, but should make it evident that
"diversity" has multiple axes, and this document does not limit its
discussion of diversity to any particular sub-set of them.
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4. Perceived Return of Investment (ROI)
While many IETF participants engage in the IETF for the sake of
improving the Internet or as a personal hobby, IETF participation
involves an investment, whether participation is done independently,
or supported by an organization (e.g., company).
As with any investment, the question of what is the return of
investment (ROI) is often asked both by participants and their
supporting companies (if any).
In the case of companies, the possible ROI will typically depend on
the specific sector, but might include:
o Benefiting from Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs)
o Benefiting from leading technologies, with e.g. improved "time to
market"
In the case of independent participants, ROI could be in the form of:
o being able to make a difference in improving Internet technologies
o better career opportunities
However, these benefits can only be realized by a small subset of
companies and participants. For example, in order for companies to
benefit from IPRs and improved time-to-market of products, they need
to be in the business of manufacturing such specific products. In
order cases, companies might deem the ROI of IETF participation as
negligible.
In the case of independent participants, the ability to realize
better career opportunities generally depends on the availability of
companies that might benefit from the IETF in the same country or
region. In other words, lacking local companies or organizations
that benefit from IETF participation essentially means that IETF
participation and the associated skills will result in a negligible
ROI for independent participants. And, when processes are biased
towards a specific community, even the possibility of improving the
Internet "for the common good" might seem unfeasible.
As a result of this, there is a whole range of individuals and
organizations for which IETF participation might not result
attractive or feasible:
o Individuals from developing countries
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o Service- and consulting-oriented companies
o Un-affilieted open source developers
o Operators
o Universities
That said, there is always the case of individuals and/or companies
that might still try engage in the IETF. However, other issues, such
as those discussed in Section 5, Section 6 and Section 9 typically
discourage such participation.
5. Effects of Current Participation
The IETF is far from achieving diversity in many (if not most) axes.
For example, the IETF is far from having gender parity in the number
of participants, or in having a truly diverse geographical
participation.
The lack of diversity in current IETF participation essentially means
that decisions and the perception of structural problems is biased
towards in favor of the realities of current participants, and
hinders the participation of those not "in the club" of large
Internet tech companies.
For example, face-to-face (f2f) meetings are held in regions
reflecting current participation levels. But this in turn
facilitates participation from those regions, and makes participation
from other regions less accessible.
Similarly, the lack of diversity in current participants is in turn
reflected in the lack of diversity in IETF groups and leadership
roles (discussed in Section 6) which, again, tends to bias processes
in favor of the current participants.
Finally, how new work is considered by the IETF is also generally
biased in favor of those "in the loop" -- that is, participants that
are already engaged in the IETF and that generally belong to the
reduced groups for which a ROI from IETF participation is feasible
(see Section 4).
6. Diversity in IETF groups and leadership roles
Lack of diversity in IETF groups and leadership roles has a direct
effect on IETF participation, as a result of:
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o Process fairness by having a very small number of interests
judging WG consensus, community consensus, and appeals.
o Leadership selection fairness by having a limited number of
interests participating in the NOMCOM and IAB.
o Arbitrary decisions produced and enforces by such groups, without
getting community consensus on them (see e.g.,
[I-D.carpenter-nomcom2020-letter].
6.1. IESG
While one might expect greater diversity in IESG members, there are
at least two possible causes for that:
o There is reduced diversity in many axes of IETF participation
o There is (allegedly) a reduced number of possible candidates with
the necessary skills
As noted in Section 5, it is probably obvious that IETF participation
is not as diverse as one would expect -- and this certainly
constrains diversity in IETF leadership roles in general.
It is also commonly suggested that there is a limited number of
candidates with the appropriate skills set for IESG positions, and
that one of the common missing skills is IETF management experience.
However, there does not seem to be a concrete effort to produce an
increase in the number of participants with appropriate skills to
volunteer for such roles. For example, fostering diversity in WG
chair positions would be an obvious choice for increasing the pool of
potential candidates for IESG positions, as discussed in Section 6.2.
6.2. WG Chairs
Most WGs have permanent WG chairs which only become rotated when:
o A WG chair takes a higher responsibility withing the IETF (e.g.
WG Chair becomes an Area Director)
o There are personal issues affecting the WG chair (e.g., WG chair
retires, changes jobs, etc.)
o There is evident malfunction of a WG which leads to an WG chair
being replaced
However, if the IETF adopted the convention that chairs are rotated
in all cases, this would certainly:
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o Increase diversity in WG chairs positions.
o Increase the pool of IETF participants with IETF leadership
experience, which could in turn help increase diversity in other
leadership roles, such as the IESG.
o Makes WG chair changes less stressful and controversial, since WG
chairs are rotated *by default*
NOTE: One could envision a policy where each WG has three co-
chairs, with different experience levels, and where one of the co-
chairs has no previous WG chair experience. Every two (or so)
years the most experienced WG chair leaves his role, which is
occupied by the second-most experienced WG chair from the group.
And a new un-experienced WG chair is incorporated by the WG.
6.3. NOMCOM
The current NOMCOM member selection rules try to be fair, but are
still biased in favor of the specific groups discussed in Section 4
and Section 5.
For example,
o The requirement to have attended X out of Y of the last f2f
meetings is clearly biased in favor of IETF participants who have
enough funding to travel to most meetings.
o Big tech companies are more likely to be willing to let their
employees do that because they're more likely to get IESG and IAB
members who favor their interests.
o There is the expectation that NOMCOM members attend f2f meetings
to carry their NOMCOM duties -- which, again, favors the same
group of participants (those with funding, which generally work
for big tech companies).
o If the NOMCOM has f2f interviews, the process also favors those
candidates that are able to attend f2f meetings, who can be
interviewed in-person.
NOTE: There are a few obvious things that could be done to improve
these issues. [RFC8989] is certainly a step in the right
direction. Having the NOMCOM perform its duties only online would
be another.
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7. Processes
Some aspects of WG operation are loosely described. While this may
be beneficial in some cases, other times the rules or expectations
regarding how WGs are meant to operate can be problematic for
participants, and even more so to newcomers.
NOTE: [I-D.carpenter-gendispatch-rfc7221bis] is a good attempt at
clarifying some specific aspects of WG operation.
8. Difficulty in Joining the IETF
It is usually hard for newcomers (and sometimes experienced people)
to see how to contribute effectively or even to find which working
groups (if any) whose work they would be interested in.
Similarly there are now so many different groups, committees,
supporting organizations, etc. involved in running IETF that it is
hard to understand the big picture, and know which group does what,
or which people to talk to about any given concern.
It is also hard for newer people to get "up to speed" on an existing
working group or topic area. Reading the WG's mailing list archive
can be very time consuming and not always very illuminating. The
Datatracker and Tools effort have been (and still are) of a lot of
help here. But having materials that e.g. provide a summary of what
the ongoing work of a WG is, and that summaries what recent
discussions have been about, and what the different views are/have
been, would certainly help in this area.
9. Economic Constraints
The current IETF processes favor participants who have enough money
to travel to several meetings a year, and/or participants who work
for companies who can afford such expense and are willing to spend
that money (which tends to be a specific subset of companies, as
discussed in Section 4).
Clearly, work such as [I-D.kuehlewind-shmoo-remote-fee] is a step in
the right direction. Other things to evaluate and consider are:
incorporating fee waivers for f2f meetings and/or adjusting the IETF
meeting fee to the local realities (i.e., move away from a flat fee),
and reducing the number of f2f meetings.
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10. Educational Constraints
You have to know a lot of technical material to participate usefully
and effectively in IETF. How IPv4 and IPv6 work, something about
routing (at least the need for advertisements and aggregation),
something about addressing, something about transport protocols
(probably TCP and UDP, at least), something about congestion control
(at least that it's needed), something about DNS, something about
protocol layering, something about applications, something about
security (at least basics of authentication and encryption), etc.For
someone with little exposure there can be a very steep learning
curve.
Additionally, improving internet protocols requires skills to assess
protocols in a critical way. While there are multiple courses and
certifications that provide general knowledge about Internet
protocols and the skills for e.g. configuring internet routers, there
are fewer materials that try to analyze protocols in a critical way
(e.g. [Perlman] and [Day]). And this represents a barrier to
newcomers.
While this is not a problem that the IETF could (or should) solve,
there has been work that has helped in this area, and possibly more
could be done. e.g., some IETF tutorials have been very educational
and useful not only to introduce newcomers to IETF work, but also to
provide context for such work, and ocasionally also discuss
shortcomings. There is certainly room for the IETF to expand on
these activities.
11. Cultural Issues
There are a number of cultural issues that also hinder diversity and
inclusiveness in the IETF. The following sub-sections discuss some
of these.
11.1. Language
Language can be exclusionary in many different ways.
For example, IETF participation requires and implies use of English
language. While English language has become the de facto
international language (with attempts such as Esperanto failing
miserably), communication in (any) non-native language can be
challenging for a number of reasons. This tends to be more
challenging when oral communication (as opposed to written) is
involved when expressions or phrasals that are unfamiliar to non-
native speakers of the language are involved.
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Consider expressions such as "red herring", "knee jerk", and
others.
Additionally, use of terms that may have a political or social
connotation may result offensive to at least part of the community
(see e.g. [I-D.knodel-terminology] or
[I-D.gondwana-effective-terminology]).
11.2. Using email effectively
Email is still the best way for IETFer's to communicate at a
distance, it's vendor-independent and avoids vendor lockin, it's
universally available, there are many providers and email user agents
to choose from, it lends itself to searching and archiving, etc.
It's the medium of choice partially because it doesn't impose many
barriers to IETF participants using it. But there's a bit of an art
to using it effectively.
11.3. Comfort zone
Willingness to leave one's comfort zone is usually a necessary
condition to participating effectively in IETF.
Anyone who participates significantly is going to run into other
people who disagree, who think about the problem differently, who
have completely different contexts. This might be because they're
from a different technical background, different kind of company,
different culture, or all of the above. This is normal and even
necessary. Trying to sort out differences between people with
different points-of-view is often uncomfortable precisely because it
often forces us to question our own assumptions. It follows that a
desire or demand to be "comfortable" at all times is
counterproductive.
And sometimes one runs into overt personal prejudice on the part of
others, and we have to deal with that too. It's part of the
landscape. Often people aren't aware of their prejudices or accept
them as natural or correct, and don't know how to turn them off even
if they wanted to. With increasing familiarity and a willingness to
respect fellow participants, it can diminish over time. But it takes
work, and that work is also often uncomfortable work.
12. IANA Considerations
There are no IANA registries within this document. The RFC-Editor
can remove this section before publication of this document as an
RFC.
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13. Security Considerations
The security implications arising from this document.
14. Acknowledgements
This document has been motivated by discussions with a number of
individuals, both on- and off-list.
15. Informative References
[Day] Day, J., "Patterns in Network Architecture: A Return to
Fundamentals", Prentice-Hall 1st edition, 1999.
[I-D.carpenter-gendispatch-rfc7221bis]
Farrel, A., Crocker, D., Carpenter, B., Gont, F., and M.
Richardson, "Handling and Adoption of Internet-Drafts by
IETF Working Groups", draft-carpenter-gendispatch-
rfc7221bis-01 (work in progress), October 2020.
[I-D.carpenter-nomcom2020-letter]
Carpenter, B., "Open Letter to the 2020-21 IETF Nominating
Committee", draft-carpenter-nomcom2020-letter-00 (work in
progress), September 2020.
[I-D.gondwana-effective-terminology]
Gondwana, B., "Effective Terminology in IETF drafts",
draft-gondwana-effective-terminology-01 (work in
progress), August 2020.
[I-D.knodel-terminology]
Knodel, M. and N. Oever, "Terminology, Power, and
Inclusive Language in Internet-Drafts and RFCs", draft-
knodel-terminology-04 (work in progress), August 2020.
[I-D.kuehlewind-shmoo-remote-fee]
Kuehlewind, M., Reed, J., and R. Salz, "Open Participation
Principle regarding Remote Registration Fee", draft-
kuehlewind-shmoo-remote-fee-02 (work in progress), January
2021.
[Perlman] Perlman, R., "Interconnections: Bridges, Routers,
Switches, and Internetworking Protocols", Addison-Wesley
Professional 2nd edition, 1999.
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[RFC8989] Carpenter, B. and S. Farrell, "Additional Criteria for
Nominating Committee Eligibility", RFC 8989,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8989, February 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8989>.
Authors' Addresses
Fernando Gont
SI6 Networks
Segurola y Habana 4310, 7mo Piso
Villa Devoto, Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires
Argentina
Email: fgont@si6networks.com
URI: https://www.si6networks.com
Keith Moore
Network Heretics
Email: moore@network-heretics.com
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