This is a review of draft-ietf-shmoo-remote-fee-05 at the request of the ART Area Review team. From the perspective of any interests or perspectives unique to the ART Area that I can identify, the document is substantially ready to go. A few quibbles and nits aside, the document is well-written (probably above recent IETF averages) and mercifully short. And from the additional perspective of someone who has intermittently followed (and even less frequently participated in) the SCHMOO work, it appears to be consistent with WG discussions and rough consensus. The comments that follow are rather more personal ones than anything that should be construed as being on behalf of the ART Area. They fall into three categories/ parts that I hope will be helpful to the IESG in considering the document: Quibbles and Nits More Substantive Issues with the Document and Its Coverage An Elephant Looking Into The Room I have deliberately not read other Last Call reviews before preparing these notes, so there may be some redundancy. ***Part I: Quibbles and Nits*** ** Section 1, paragraph 3: "there was no longer a distinction between remote and on-site participants for those meetings" Of course there was a distinction: there were no on-site participants during that period. The important point is that, when on-site meetings resumed with remote participants (in larger proportions than before), efforts were made, and continue to be made, to minimize the distinction that then returned. ** Section 1, paragraph 2: Current: either due to financial reasons... Should probably be New: due either to financial reasons... ** Section 4, last paragraph: Current/Old: simply lost of business interest Should probably be New: simply loss of business interest ***Part II: More Substantive Issues with the Document and Its Coverage*** Most, if not all, of the issues in this and the subsequent part of the review were raised on the WG mailing list but do not seem to be reflected in the document. AFAIK, those omissions represent WG consensus, but I hope the IESG will assure itself that they also represent IETF consensus. **End of Section 1 and end of Section 2** The last sentence of Section 1 reads "In both cases, even a small registration fee can be a barrier to participation" and the last one of Section 2 says "If the free option requires additional registration steps, such as applying for a fee waiver, those requirements should be clearly documented." Borrowing a bit from recent discussions in several WGs about IANA registrations, the IETF should recognize (and probably indicate explicitly in the document) that a goal of zero barriers to participation is probably unattainable. For some, registration may be a barrier especially if it requires the disclosure of personal identifying information. It would, IMO, be entirely reasonable for the IETF to decide that such disclosures (whether through a registration system or otherwise) strike a reasonable balance with participation and a process that is seen by others as open and transparent, but how far it is reasonable to go in that direction should probably be seen as a matter of principle like the rest of this document and not a simple administrative procedure the LLC should be making without IETF community guidance. **Section 3, Pargraph 2** "without any barriers other than the application for the free registration itself" Along the same lines as the comments above, we should recognize that, for some potential participants, "applying" for a fee waiver may constitute a barrier and that, in particular, acknowledging lack of ability or willingness to pay fees may feel burdensome even if the application does not require any justification for the request. At a very minimum, the IETF should consider very strongly advising the LLC to take, and publicize, meaningful measures to keep the identities of those who have have applied for fee waivers and any information that may be disclosed by those applications confidential. I gather that is current practice, but it should probably be noted as a principle. The comments above are largely independent of the very helpful analysis in Section 4 and addressing them should not require changes to that analysis. ***An Elephant Looking Into The Room *** (not quite in the room) (and a privacy issue, so maybe an invisible elephant) Section 1 of the document carefully distinguishes between a "participant" (which the rest of the document is about) and an "observer". The latter is neither defined nor discussed further. In the interest of keeping the document closely focused on fee structures, that is probably reasonable and appropriate. However, the open process principle defined in RFC3935 can reasonably be extrapolated to argue that there should be a mechanism for people to observe the IETF and its working without "participating" in any meaningful way. Such observers would presumably have no rights to intervene in a meeting in any way (including asking to speak, making entries in chat rooms or meeting notes, and so on) and, presumably, would not want such rights For many years prior to the changes that started around (or somewhat before) 2000, the IETF did not make a strong distinction between observers and participants in terms of ability to remotely access meetings and meeting materials. However, other than the ability to make very crude estimates from, e.g., connection statistics, we didn't know how many of the former there were, much less who they were. Although they do not constitute one of the observer categories for which I am most concerned, if someone is considering participation in the IETF but wants to try to understand how things work before making a decision, observing all or part of a meeting without making whatever commitment they might think is implied by registering, identifying themselves, and asking for a fee waiver might be an attractive option and ultimately gain us more, and more diverse, participation. It has been said that we don't need to consider observers any more because, e.g., they can always watch the meetings on YouTube. Maybe that is true, at least unless we have observers who have legitimate needs to see meetings and streams in real time or close to it; people for whom the usual delay of a day or more (occasionally a week or more) in getting materials that participants could see or be involved with posted. Proving the non-existence of such (potential) observers would be no easier than any other proof of a universal negative. Perhaps it is reasonable for the IETF to abandon the idea (and principles) of real-time observers. But, if so, that decision should, as a matter of principles about how we make decisions, be a matter of IETF discussion, rough consensus, and explicit, documented, guidance to the LLC as appropriate, not one made as an administrative action based, e.g., on the LLC or IESG being confident they know what potential observers might be like or require. thanks.