Subject: Closing ticket 729 - "check with accountants and legal"

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 15:47:18 +0100

With the input resulting from discussions with Lynn Duval and Jorge 
Contreras, I suggest that we can now close ticket #729 - "General - Check 
with accountants & leagal advisors" as "done".

                    Harald

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From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:44:57 -0500

--On Friday, 21 January, 2005 15:47 +0100 Harald Tveit
Alvestrand <[email-masked]> wrote:

> With the input resulting from discussions with Lynn Duval and
> Jorge Contreras, I suggest that we can now close ticket #729 -
> "General - Check with accountants & leagal advisors" as "done".

Harald,

For whatever it is worth at this late date, the original
proposal was that _in addition to_ checking with ISOC's
financial people about what would work for them and with IETF
counsel about what could be acceptable (I considered those a
given, not an issue), a request be made to a selected few major
organizational* supporters** of the IETF that they have
senior-level financial and enterprise management people review
the general organizational design and concepts, comment to us on
their reactions, and make suggestions as appropriate.

As Dave Crocker has commented on several occasions, few of us
are expert and experienced in organizational design.  With the
greatest of respect and appreciation to Lynn and Jorge for their
efforts, I don't believe either of them would identify
themselves as primarily experts in that area either.  Checking
with people who really are expert is only the same level of
prudence that I hope we always follow with technical standards.

My impression was that there was some consensus that this was a
good idea, or at least not harmful: in the worst case, we could
ignore advice we didn't like and, had the review been initiated
in a timely way, it would not have had any negative effect on
the schedule.

At this stage, initiating that sort of review would almost
certainly have a negative schedule impact, so we had probably
best drop it.  But, before you close the ticket, I, and I think
the community, would appreciate some explanation as to why the
original suggestion was dropped or otherwise considered
unnecessary.

       john

* Working definition of "supporter": an organization that is
making a significant financial investment in the IETF by, e.g.,
ISOC platinum support, sending significant numbers of people who
are actively participating in IETF's work to meetings, or
equivalent.

** Working definition of "major": big enough to actually have
real financial departments (e.g., with a senior-level CFO and
staff, not just a person or two) and organization management
structure with layers of enterprise and departmental management
and management-side executive staff.

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 14:29:39 +0100

John,

reason for no more accountant or legal review: Resource failure :-(

I sent out a couple of messages saying "can you suggest appropriate 
reviewers". I got ONE response, and the person who suggested him did not 
react when I asked him to send an introductory query to the person.

I sent off a query to one legally educated person I know, who promised to 
undertake review. But nothing has come back so far.

So - we tried, but not hard enough, it seems.

                     Harald