[ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 20, Issue 1

[Bob Braden]

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>Craig, I'm not sure that "open to anyone" is really an apt description; I'm
>not sure that some random person coming in off the street would have been
>allowed in. I suspect it was more like NSF had been added to the list of
>organizations that could send people.


I don't recall any explicit decision to make IETF meetings closed.
It was hardly likely that anyone outside the immediate community would have
cared, or understood what was happening enough to WANT to come.
  (Those of us who had been involved
from the beginning had only the dimmest conception of where the whole thing
would go!)

Originally, the IETF (like the other IAB task forces) was a DARPA thing,
until NSFnet brought a whole bunch of new operational interest.
I recall that Van just sort of wandered in...

Bob Braden