In principle I would be against charging, but my experience of being a
chair makes me believe that many authors have no reason to publish
their I-D which are just a burden to the I-D secretariat and thus the
entire IETF community. In many occasions, I have seen new drafts been
announced by the secretariat, but not announced by the authors
themselves in the WG they were targeting. In several occasions I
emailed such authors to know more about their intention and many times
I didn't get any reply at all. The others replied pt-2-pt but never
announced their draft on the WG list (but they asked the chairs to do
so ;-). So, my conclusion is that in most cases these are students who
in their academic standards are required to show evidence of
publication. I'm not sure the IETF is designed for this. In the other
cases, prospective authors do not understand the IETF process, or are
to shy to advertise their work.
So, this proposition of charging could be refined as "pubishing I-Ds
that are not supported by any WG should be charged" or something
similar. Of course, WG drafts should be free of charge. Note that the
aim of this proposition would not to get more fund to the IETF, but to
relieve the IETF of the cost of processing drafts that are never read,
never discussed, and absolutely useless.
