<top-posting intentional>

I hadn’t meant to comment on this further, after Melinda intervened. However, 
since the issue has come up again, I offer the following observation:

The number of people who follow/lurk on this list is, I am sure, much larger 
than the number who are active on it.

Those who are active should, I suggest, be conscious of the effect the tone of 
the discussion can have on the wider audience. I would not be at all surprised 
if there were potential contributors who have been discouraged from taking 
part, because the to-and-fro can appear adversarial beyond what is needed to 
express and test technical hypotheses.

Respectfully,
Robin

Robin Wilton
Technical Outreach Director - Identity and Privacy
Internet Society

email: [email protected]
Phone: +44 705 005 2931
Twitter: @futureidentity

On 14 Jul 2015, at 15:57, Paul Wouters <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Tue, 14 Jul 2015, Stephen Kent wrote:
> 
> Steve,
> 
>> Or, conversely, you could chastise Ben for making offensive statements about
>> Google's "position" in his posting.
>> I observe that Ben's reply to my question about the "our" in his message is 
>> that
>> he was stating Google's position.
>> Since the IETF ethos calls for us to participate as individuals, and since 
>> Ben
>> appears to be trying use Google's stature in supporting a technical argument,
>> where is the criticism of his statement?
> 
> While Ben could have made it clearer that he was speaking without his RFC
> document author hat on, he did clarify that later on. It is perfectly
> reasonable for any participant to explain why their current $dayjob
> would or would not be happy or violate/not violate certain protocol bits
> under discussion. In fact, such information is useful and can lead to
> participants opening up to further discussion and reaching new compromises.
> In the end, we would end up with more interoperable implementations from
> different vendors.
> 
> In my view, Ben's remark were not "offensive", "flaunting" or "stark".
> 
>> Also, I have never seen any vendor make a statement on an IETF list in which 
>> they
>> openly say that their development plans are not influenced by whatever IETF
>> standards may arise.  I don't doubt that many vendors feel and act this
>> way, but they usually don't flaunt their intent.
> 
> This is a very subjective view on your end. It is fine if Ben wants to
> clarify the position of his $dayjob vendor.
> 
>> The issue here isn't whether
>> browser UI details are appropriate fodder for IETF standards, but rather 
>> whether
>> Google staff should make stark statements like this in the context of an 
>> IETF WG
>> discussion.
> 
> I hope that Ben continues to explain the views of Google on various
> protocol bits. I am also confident that Ben can keep his document author
> hat and $dayjob hat apart. If the working group feels that Ben can no
> longer do this, we can think about adding another author/editor to this
> document, provided we can find a volunteer.
> 
>> On 7/10/15 6:23 AM, Stephen Kent wrote:
>> nice of you to reaffirm that Google doesn't care about IETF standards
>> in this context.
>> Steve, this kind of commentary really needs to stop.
>> Melinda
> 
> I concur.
> 
> Paul
> 
> _______________________________________________
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