IEEE needs to reform

From there Mission page:

Vision



To advance global prosperity by fostering technological innovation, enabling members' careers and promoting community worldwide.



Mission



The IEEE promotes the engineering process of creating, developing, integrating, sharing, and applying knowledge about electro and information technologies and sciences for the benefit of humanity and the profession.

Let's check that with reality:

1. They require the copyright for papers to be transferred to them and preprints to be taken down once the article is published. Of course, their journal subscriptions are so cheap that most people in the world can't afford them. Section 7 of their copyright policy allows use of public domain articles. But see http://cr.yp.to/writing/ieee.html for contrary actual practice.
2. They don't disclose how much they spend on lobbying efforts. In the latest financial report, I saw $60m for membership and public services. I am assuming public services includes lobbying.
   
   
3. IEEE opposes H1B visa program. They also oppose "off-shoring". The idea of being able to protect domestic wages by simply restricting others from coming in is bogus. People need to wake-up and realize that national economies are slowly giving way to international economies. Protectionism is also another name for inefficiency. Markets may not be entirely efficient, but the increasing possibility of separating the workers from the market means, protectionism is only going to hurt the US economy. The US is still a pretty good place to do business in spite of higher wages because of lower taxes, consistently enforced laws and highly skilled worker pool. Try protectionism and that's going end pretty soon.
   
   
4. They support software patents.
   
   
5. They support tax credits for a whole array of things. Tax system has been overused over the years as an instrument of policy instead of a revenue collection system. No need to burden the system with credits for things that companies want to do anyway. The trouble with the R&D scenario today is not incentives, but disincentives of the quarterly reporting phenomenon.
   
   

To be fair, they have some decent positions too:

1. They support reverse engineering.
2. They have come out somewhat in support fair-use limitations on DMCA, though I think their stance is not strong enough.

I will post again if I find more information.

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