Abhishek,
The overriding reason, as far as I'm concerned, is that many or most
service providers have a policy of avoiding equipment purchases that
lock them into a single vendor if at all possible. Second sources are
necessary for a number of reasons, and not only for competition - what
happens if the selected vendor goes out of business, has a supply
chain failure, kills the product for whatever reason, or alternatively
simply can't meet the demand for the product? That's why you see
carriers sponsoring or conducting their own interoperability testing,
and include interoperability requirements in their RFPs. And while
interoperability can be obtained through private agreements between
vendors, it's much easier for all concerned if there are standardized
solutions that have been publicly vetted and agreed upon by the
community at large (both vendors and service providers).
Cheers,
Andy
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:57 PM, Abhishek Verma
<abhishekv(_dot_)verma(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
Hi,
I have a basic question relating to patents and IETF.
Assume that i have a nifty idea on how i can speed up, lets say, a
database exchange in OSPF. My doubt is that why should i submit an
IETF draft describing this, which can later become an RFC, when i can
very well patent this idea? I understand that if i submit this to
IETF, then there will be an RFC and all vendors will come out with
inter-operable implementations. However, if i dont give it to IETF and
rather submit a patent, i can do very well for the vendor that i work
for. All customers using this vendor's boxes will now have access to
patented database exchange in OSPF, which will effectively mean more
business for this vendor.
So, the question is, what is the motivation for somebody to write an
internet-draft when the person can file a patent?
I spoke to several people offline and i couldnt get any good answers.
The typical response was that most ISPs prefer multiple vendors, and a
patented solution will cause issues as the other vendor will not have
that support. Is this the only reason?
Thanks,
Abhishek
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