Network Working Group M. Kuehlewind
Internet-Draft Ericsson
Intended status: Best Current Practice J. Reed
Expires: 28 April 2022 R. Salz
Akamai
25 October 2021
Open Participation Principle regarding Remote Registration Fee
draft-ietf-shmoo-remote-fee-02
Abstract
This document outlines a principle for open participation that
extends the open process principle defined in RFC3935 by stating that
there must always be a free option for online participation to IETF
meetings and, if possible, related IETF-hosted events over the
Internet.
Status of This Memo
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This Internet-Draft will expire on 28 April 2022.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Principle of open participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Financial Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Considerations on Use and Misuse of a Free Participation
Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Introduction
Remote participation for IETF in-person meetings has evolved over
time from email-only to live chat and audio streaming, and,
currently, to a full online meeting system that is tightly integrated
with the in-room session and enables interactive participation by
audio and video. Due to this evolution, and because most in-person
attendees paid registration fees and this has been sufficient to
support the meeting, online participation has historically been free
for remote attendees.
Given this more full-blown participation option, the IETF has started
seen an increasing number of remote participants. This increase can
be explained by the ease with which new participants can join a
meeting or only attend selected parts of the meeting agenda, and also
by a less strongly perceived need to attend every meeting in person,
either due to financial reasons or other circumstances. In order to
better understand these trends the IETF started requiring
registration as "participant" (in contrast to an "observer") for
remote participation, still without any registration fee applied.
With the recent move to fully online meetings, however, there is no
longer a distinction between remote and on-site participants. Since
IETF meeting costs and other costs still have to be covered, there is
the need for a meeting fee for remote participants, which risks the
removal of the free remote option.
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The introduction of a fee for remote participation raised concerns
about the potential impact on both, those who regularly remotely
attend IETF meetings as well as people considering attending an IETF
meeting for the first time. In both cases, even a small registration
fee can be a barrier to participation.
2. Principle of open participation
This document outlines the principle of open participation that the
IETF Administration LLC (IETF LLC) is expected to incorporate into
decisions about the registration fee structure for fully online
meetings.
The principle this document states is simple: there must always be an
option for free remote participation in any IETF meeting, regardless
of whether the meeting has a physical presence. Related events of a
meeting for which the IETF provides remote participation services and
are therefore part of the IETF's open process [RFC3935] are
encouraged to follow this principle as well.
This principle aims to support the openness principle of the IETF as
defined in [RFC3935]:
"Open process - any interested person can participate in the work,
know what is being decided, and make his or her voice heard on the
issue. Part of this principle is our commitment to making our
documents, our WG mailing lists, our attendance lists, and our
meeting minutes publicly available on the Internet."
While the principle in RFC3935 is explicitly noting that this
principle includes a requirement to open basically all our documents
and documentation and making them accessible over the Internet, it
was probably written with mainly having email interactions in mind
when talking about participation. This document extends this
principle to explicitly cover online participation at meetings.
Particularly in this context, openness should be seen as open and
free.
This document does not stipulate that all IETF meetings or related
IETF events must have a remote participation option, because there
could be technical or other reasons why that might not always be
possible. This document rather says that if remote participation is
provided, there should always be a free option to make the process as
open as possible. Having said that, it is of course strongly
anticipated that at least all working group sessions as well as BoFs
and the administrative plenary of an IETF meeting provide an option
for remote participation.
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Further, in order to fully remove barriers to participation, any free
registration option must offer the same degree of interactivity and
functionality available to paid remote attendees. The free option
must be clearly and prominently listed on the meeting website and
registration page. If the free option requires additional
registration steps, such as applying for a fee waiver, those
requirements should be clearly documented.
3. Financial Impact
Online meetings can have lower costs than in-person meetings,
however, they still come with expenses, as do other services that the
IETF provides such as mailing lists, document access via the
datatracker or other online platforms, or support for
videoconferencing, e.g., with Webex accounts for working groups and
other roles in the IETF.
These and other operating costs of the IETF are also cross-financed
by income generated through meeting fees. The intention of this
document and the principle stated herein is not to make participation
free for everyone, but to always offer a free remote participation
option that a potential attendee can apply for without any barriers
other than the registration procedure itself. As long as the overall
meeting expenses are covered by paid registrations, sponsorships and
other sources of revenue, additional remote participants usually
impose very low additional expenses.
It is not in scope for this document to make suggestions for changing
the IETF's overall funding model. This is the responsibility of the
IETF LLC Board taking agreed principles like the one proposed in this
document into account. If unlimited free remote participation is
determined to adversely affect the number of paying participants or
the cost of free participation emerges to a signification factor, the
LLC might implement additional measures to manage these costs. If
the LLC decides to do this, they should make their decision and
rationale known to the community. As discussed in the next section,
assessment of eligibility is difficult and any limit on the number of
available free registrations can cause unfairness and negatively
impact openness.
4. Considerations on Use and Misuse of a Free Participation Option
This document does not provide specific requirements on when to use
or not use the free option. The purpose of the free option is to
enable everybody who is interested in participation to join meetings
without the meeting fee imposing a financial barrier. These cases
cannot be limited to a certain group, like students or "self-funded"
participants, nor to any specific other restrictions like the number
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of meetings previously attended or previous level of involvement.
The purpose is simply to maximise participation without barriers in
order to make the standards process as open as possible.
It is expected that participants who have financial support to use
the regular registration option will do so. Paying a registration
fee is a way for their sponsor to support the sustainability of the
IETF. For example, a higher late payment charge can be used to
maximise this financial support. However, this document does not
comment on the actual payment structure of the IETF meeting fee other
than the requirement for a free option. The fee payment structure is
set the by the IETF LLC such that the viability of the IETF and the
need of IETF participants to work productively within the IETF can be
warranted.
The LLC is responsible to ensure the financial stability of the IETF
and therefore should monitor trends in the use of the free
participation option that could endanger the viability of the IETF
and, if necessary, manage the associated costs. Aggregated data on
the number and percentage of free registrations used should be
published, as this will permit analysis of the use and change in use
over time of the free registration option without revealing personal
information.
As the principle defined in this document aims to promote openness
and thereby enhance participation, an increase in use of free
registrations is a success and likely a sign of increased interest
and not necessarily a sign of misuse, as long as the number of paid
registrations stays stable and retains the projected needed income.
If the number of paid registrations, however, decreases, this can
still also have various reasons other than misuse, such as
restrictions on travel to physical meetings due to cost savings or
environmental reasons, general cost savings and lesser focus on
standardization work, or simply lost of business interest. Such
trends can impact the sustainability of the IETF due to its
dependency on meetings fees to cross-finance other costs, independent
of use of the free registrations.
5. Acknowledgments
Thanks to everybody involved in the shmoo working group discussion,
esepcially Brian Carpenter, Jason Livingood, and Charles Eckel for
proposing concrete improvements and their in-depth reviews.
6. Normative References
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[RFC3935] Alvestrand, H., "A Mission Statement for the IETF",
BCP 95, RFC 3935, DOI 10.17487/RFC3935, October 2004,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3935>.
Authors' Addresses
Mirja Kuehlewind
Ericsson
Email: mirja.kuehlewind@ericsson.com
Jon Reed
Akamai
Email: jreed@akamai.com
Rich Salz
Akamai
Email: rsalz@akamai.com
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