At 4:04 PM 1/8/95, Ned Freed wrote:
As such, I don't think there's a valid objection to be made here on procedural
grounds. And I do agree that any such entanglements need to be described in the
My own reading on IETF views on this is that we try like heck to avoid
using patented stuff. Sometimes, we have no choice. In those cases, we
try like heck to make sure that the stuff is "easily" available. That is,
we claim that we won't standardize something that carries with it onerous
license fees.
But in all cases, we need to a) be aware of the licensing, b) consider the
criticality of the function and whether there are alternatives that are
equally viable for the Internet, and c) make sure the spec cites all this
carefully.
My own sense of gif is that it has a very, very high degree of market
acceptance and software availabiity. While we might want to avoid licensed
technology, my sense is that gif already has a de facto position of broad
interoperability.
This was brought home to me recently.
d/
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Dave Crocker
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