[discuss] What is MSism?

David Conrad drc at virtualized.org
Fri Apr 4 22:48:08 UTC 2014


On Apr 4, 2014, at 2:45 PM, S Moonesamy <sm+1net at elandsys.com> wrote:
>> I asked this earlier on the IETF mailing list, but I'll ask again: how many government officials, other than the U.S., have ever participated in IETF mailing lists or meetings or published in the IETF Journal? (This is not a rhetorical question; I'm actually trying to find out the answer.)
> 
> I'll read "participated" as making technical contributions.  I do not read all the IETF mailing lists.  My guess is that there are a few people working for governments, excluding the United States, who participate in IETF mailing lists.  The number is low for the United States if I exclude government contractors.

Actually, the number is (theoretically, at least) zero because participants in the IETF are individuals, not representatives of the organizations that employ them.

If the question is how many individuals who are employed by a government but not the US government participate in the IETF, the number is non-zero, but difficult to establish for a variety of reasons: they are not required to identify themselves, the entities for which they work may or may not be considered "governmental" (e.g., is the employee of a national university considered a government employee? an employee of a national PTT?, a consultant who has multiple contracts, one of which is with a government?), and the definition of "participate" is vague (does reading a mailing list count as participating? posting "me too!" only?), etc.

Regards,
-drc

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