Anybody can participate in the IETF (Was: Why is IPv6 broken?)

Tue Jul 12 19:40:15 UTC 2011

Leo Bicknell wrote:
  In short, make it easy for the operators to participate at the right
> time in the process.  It will be better for everyone!

Unfortunately, where you want to be inserted into the process is when everybody has
said their piece 80-dozen times and are tired and just want to get on with life. So
it doesn't matter whether you're an operator or the IESG -- you're not going to make
many friends at that point telling them they got it wrong.

On the other hand, is it really too much to ask operators -- especially big ones with
a vested interest in not having the IETF throw crap over the wall for them to debug --
to *hire* a liaison whose job is to monitor a swath of working groups, bofs, etc, and
participate the entire way through? I imagine they'd be pretty popular amongst clueful
vendors, and would give you a leg up knowing what's good and what's just sales-drek.

Mike