Free Knowledge Culture Calendar/January 16

We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code. Today in 1986 the Internet Engineering Task Force was formed, a standards organization for the Internet. At the latest when compared to other large standardization bodies, it becomes clear how incredibly open its process is: Not only are the maybe seemingly high conference attendance fees actually a fraction of usual such fees, but most importantly do all working groups communicate out on the open Internet, and all meetings are streamed live and provide an open Internet Relay Chat back channel for remote participation. In that manner, the IETF has created and develops many successful open standards that allow the different parts of the Internet to work together, including very basic ones like TCP, or the well-known HTTP.