The IETF Trust conducted a community consultation on restructuring of the IETF
Trust from a Virginia Common Trust to a not for profit corporation registered
in Delaware.
The IETF Trust published a web page[1] holding materials explaining the
motivation, the current IETF Trust Agreement which the Trust operates under,
and the proposed bylaws of the new corporation which are based directly on the
current Trust Agreement.
The Trustees used the TLP-INTEREST[2] Mailing list to collect feedback and
questions on the proposed restructuring.
The Trustees also presented on the restructuring at the IETF113 Plenary[3], the
March 2022 ISOC Board of Trustees meeting, and held on May 23, 2022 an
informational Q&A webinar[4]. The recordings of the webinar and IETF plenary
are available on YouTube [3][4].
The IETF Trust serves several communities, and we received engagement from many
interested parties including IETF community members, the IETF LLC, the Regional
Internet Registry (RIR) community including ARIN, and ICANN.
Based on the feedback received during the consultation the IETF Trustees have
concluded that the Trust will proceed with the proposed restructuring to a not
for profit Delaware corporation.
During the consultation, the IETF LLC asked the Trustees to consider expanding
the restructuring scope to include moving the functions of the IETF Trust into
the IETF Administrative LLC. The Trustees have discussed this suggestion and
do not believe that it is an appropriate change to make. Replacing the
currently independent IETF Trust with the IETF LLC, and by association ISOC,
would fundamentally alter the proposed restructuring and would greatly expand
the scope to include the complex set of issues surrounding the role of the IETF
Trust and the assets it manages.
The IETF Trust will move forward with the restructuring plan with the next
phases to be formally filing the articles of incorporation for the new
corporation, applying for IRS 501(c)3 non-profit status, and once obtained
conduct the process of transferring the Trust’s current assets, agreements, and
licenses to the new not-for-profit corporation. This is expected to run
through 2023. The Trustees will provide updates to the community as the
restructuring proceeds.
Thank you to the many people and organizations that participated in this
consultation.
IETF Trustees:
Glenn Deen (Chair)
Kathleen Moriarity (Treasurer)
John Levine,
Stephan Wenger
Joel Halpern
[1]
https://trustee.ietf.org/about/community-consultation-on-restructuring-the-ietf-trust/
[2] TLP-Interest Archive: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/tlp-interest/
[3] IETF 113 Plenary Recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yviSgV27ULM&t=2940s
[4] May 23 Webinar Recording: https://youtu.be/wzJbLnjq_fk
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