| IETF Administrative Support Activity 2 | G. Camarillo |
| Internet-Draft | Ericsson |
| Obsoletes: 2031 (if approved) | J. Livingood |
| Intended status: Informational | Comcast |
| Expires: June 1, 2019 | November 28, 2018 |
The Updated IETF-ISOC Relationship
draft-ietf-iasa2-rfc2031bis-00
This document summarises the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) - Internet Society (ISOC) relationship, following a major revision to the structure of the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA) in 2018. The IASA was revised under a new "IASA 2.0" structure by the IASA2 Working Group, which changed the IETF's administrative, legal, and financial structure. As a result, it also changed the relationship between the IETF and ISOC, which made it necessary to revise RFC 2031.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on June 1, 2019.
Copyright (c) 2018 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the body that is responsible for the development and maintenance of the Internet Standards. The IETF is primarily a volunteer organization. Its driving force is a group of dedicated high-quality engineers from all over the world. In a structure of working groups, these engineers exchange ideas and experience, and through discussion and collaboration (both electronically and face-to-face) they strive to achieve rough consensus and implement the standards through running code.
The growth of the Internet over several decades also led to the growth of the IETF. More and more people, organizations, and companies rely on Internet Standards. Non-technical issues, such as legal, administrative, and financial issues had long been an undesirable but unavoidable part of the IETF. To address these issues in 1995 the IETF established the Poised95 Working Group. Its goal was to structure and document the IETF processes in order to maximize the flexibility and freedom of IETF engineers so that they could work in the way the IETF had always been most successful and to honour the IETF credo: "Rough consensus and running code".
The Poised95 Working Group concluded that the Internet Society (ISOC), which was formed in 1992, was the best organization to handle all of these legal, administrative, and financial tasks on behalf of and in close cooperation with the IETF. This led to documenting things such as the IETF standards process [RFC2026], the IETF organizational structure [RFC2028], the IETF Nominating Committee (NomCom) procedures [RFC2282], and the IETF-ISOC relationship [RFC2031].
As time passed and operational experience accumulated, additional structure was necessary. As a result, the Internet Administrative Support Activity (IASA) was defined in 2005 and documented in [RFC4071] and [RFC4371].
In 2018, the IASA was revised under a new "IASA 2.0" structure by the IASA2 Working Group, which made signifincant revisions to the IETF's administrative, legal, and financial structure. One critical outcome was that the formation, in close cooperation between the IETF and ISOC, of the IETF Administration Limited Liability Company (IETF LLC) as a disregarded entity of ISOC.
As a result of the the IASA 2.0 structure [I-D.ietf-iasa2-struct] and formation of the IETF LLC, the relationship between the IETF and ISOC has changed. This document summarises the current state of the IETF - ISOC relationship at a high level and replaces [RFC2031].
The IETF remains responsible for the development and quality of the Internet Standards. The Internet Society will aid the IETF by facilitating legal and organizational issues as described below. Apart from the roles described below, the IETF and ISOC acknowledge that ISOC has no influence whatsoever on the technical content of Internet Standards.
ISOC and the IETF have historically been philosophically aligned. ISOC's connection with the IETF community has always played an important role in its policy work. ISOC has always been an advocate for multistakeholder processes, which include the technical community. Open standards are an explicit part of one of the focus areas in ISOC's mission: Advancing the development and application of Internet infrastructure, technologies, and open standards.
ISOC plays a small role in the IETF standards process. In particular, ISOC assists the standards process by appointing the IETF NomCom chair and by confirming IAB candidates who are put forward by the IETF NomCom, as described in [RFC7437], and by acting as the last resort in the appeals process, as describes in [RFC2026].
The IETF plays a role in the governance of ISOC. Per ISOC's by-laws, the IETF appoints a set of trustees to the ISOC Board. The process by which the IETF makes those appointments is defined in [RFC3677].
The IETF LLC was organized as a "disregarded entity" of ISOC. This means it operates as a branch or division of ISOC for tax purposes. ISOC operates as a U.S. 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, and was founded to support and promote the development of the Internet as a global technical infrastructure, a resource to enrich people's lives, and a force for good in society. The Limited Liability Company Agreement of IETF Administration LLC, dated August 27 2018, is the Operating Agreement that governs the relationship between the IETF LLC and ISOC.
As a result of the creation of the IETF LLC, the IETF now has its own legal umbrella. This IETF LLC structure now covers the IETF standards and IETF standards process, all IETF officers (IAB, IESG, Nomcom, and WG chairs), IETF employees and contractors, the RFC series and RFC editor, etc.
The IETF Trust, documented in [RFC5378], and updated in [I-D.ietf-iasa2-trust-rationale] and [I-D.ietf-iasa2-trust-update], provides legal protection for the RFC series of documents and other aspects of the IETF. This includes things such as protection for trademarks, copyrights, and intellectual property rights. As part of the IETF Trust arrangement, IETF standards documents can be freely downloaded, copied, and distributed without financial or other distribution restrictions, though all rights to change these documents lie with the IETF. The IETF Trust also provides legal protection in case of disputes over intellectual property rights and other rights.
Under the terms of the Operating Agreement between ISOC and the IETF, ISOC has agreed to provide some funding support for the IETF (ISOC has historically provided the IETF with significant financial support). The IETF LLC will be responsible for creating and managing an annual operating budget for the IETF, for fund raising, for maintaining a bank account, and so on. The IETF LLC is managed by a board of directors, one of whom is appointed by ISOC. The intention is that ISOC and the IETF LLC operate at arms length.
Under the new IASA 2.0 structure, the IETF is solely responsible for its administration via the IETF LLC, IETF Trust, IAB, IESG, IETF working groups, and other IETF processes. A further exploration of this can be found in Section 4 of [I-D.ietf-iasa2-struct].
This document introduces no new security considerations.
[RFC Editor: Please remove this section upon publication.]
This document introduces no new privacy considerations.
[RFC Editor: Please remove this section upon publication.]
The authors would like to thank Erik Huizer for his contribution as the author of [RFC2031], which this document replaces.
RFC Editor: Please remove this section upon publication.
-00: Initial version published