In <42D69C75(_dot_)6030601(_at_)well(_dot_)com> Chip Mefford
<cpm(_at_)well(_dot_)com> writes:
There are many licenses, and many methods of pertaining to intellectual
property. I have very good reason to believe that in order to have
standard actually be a standard, it must be adoptable.
Agreed.
Otherwise, the discussion is quite simply out of scope.
I really do understand what you are saying here, but as the old
saying goes, "well begun is half done". I feel it would really be very
helpful to put this issue to bed as soon as possible. Trying to
remove this this issue from the discussion entirely, or attempting to
label it as non-germane to task at hand, I fear will just end in
frustration for all involved.
Attempts to ignore the license issue, and if the discussion became too
loud to try and rule it out of scope, was the direction that MARID
took. It didn't work very well, although the technique of shutting
down the WG and going directly through the IESG did.
One approach might be to get a rough consensus *EARLY ON* about
what levels and types of IPR encumbrance is acceptable. The MARID
group never tried to reach a consensus on this issue and therefore it
was hard to rule things as being already resolved.
One of the other problems with MARID is it started out considering
SPF, DMP, DRIP, FSV, SS, MTAMark, and I think a few other proposals.
Then Caller-ID and CSV were brought into the mix. These proposals
cover a wide variety of different identities and therefore need
different approaches.
The point here is that once MARID got around to adopting a technology,
we were half way through our charter and no consensus on the IPR
issues were resolved. The IPR issues were unclear until almost the
very end, making things worse.
It appears to me that the WG process RFCs are clear: if there are two
fairly equivalent technologies that are proposed, and one has fewer
IPR restrictions, then that one should be adopted. WGs CAN adopt
encumbered technology for any of a number of reasons, but email is one
area of the Internet that has had a very long history of having few
IPR constraints.
During MARID I said something like "we really don't want to go through
the RSA experience again do we?" Let's not repeat MARID.
-wayne