Subject: Statement on Affiliation and Voting Members

From: NomCom Chair 2021 <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2021 13:10:51 -0700

There has been much discussion about what the policy is when next week's
random selection is performed and we are applying the limit of maximum 2
voting members per primary affiliation (per RFC8713).

I will not judge whether different subsidiaries are internally
independent or not. For the purposes of voting member affiliations I
will err on the side of caution. So, for example, I would count Loon
(well, if it was still active) and Google as part of Alpha, the
different parts of Cisco as under that umbrella and Futurewei and Huawei
as the same.
 
Similarly, we have been equally careful with other volunteers whom we
have had to disqualify because their employers appear on the list of
contractors to the LLC (another reason for disqualification per
RFC8713). Some of these individuals are not involved in any particular
contracts with the LLC, but per the above considerations we must be
extra careful and have had to unfortunately invalidate them. 

When it comes to issues of affiliation we must be consistent with this
position. Not doing so would be careless and would not be fair to others 
we have already disqualified.

Gabriel Montenegro
NomCom Chair 2021-2022
nomcom-chair-2021 at ietf dot org