Subject: Re: Financial state of the IETF - to be presented Wednesday

From: John Lazzaro <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 12:01:44 -0800

Instead of trying to fix the current model (meeting fees subsidize a
publishing arm), it might make sense to consider having the publishing
arm be self-funded.

How do non-profit journals stay solvent? A mix of four income streams:

 -1- Subscriptions

 -2- Page charges for authors

 -3- Advertising

 -4- Value-added services

I think most of us would agree that -1- isn't in our DNA.  But some
combination of -2-, -3-, and -4- might make WGs, the IESG, and the RFC
editor self-funding.

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John Lazzaro -- Research Specialist -- CS Division -- EECS -- UC Berkeley
lazzaro [at] cs [dot] berkeley [dot] edu     www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro
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From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 09:11:30 -0500

>publishing arm), it might make sense to consider having the publishing
This would be anathema to the IETF; it would impose a much higher 
barrier to implementers, and make it expensive for third parties to 
determine whether or not a given implementation is compliant.  Both of 
these would have the effect of lowering the quality of implementations.

Of course, it might be the only way; but we should look *hard* for 
alternatives.

-- 
/===============================================================\
|John Stracke      [email-masked]                        |
|Principal Engineer|http://www.centive.com                      |
|Centive           |My opinions are my own.                     |
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|If you're going to walk on thin ice, you might as well *dance*!|
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