At 5:43 PM +0100 7/14/04, Shevek wrote:
On Thu, 1 Jul 2004, wayne wrote:
4) Proposals must have IP licensing terms that allow for use in both
commercial and GPLed MTAs.
The requirement to even THINK about licensing terms when one is
implementing a "standard" internet protocol is almost unimaginable.
<snip>
. I believe that a large part of the reason for the
success of the GPL, BSD or Apache licenses is that the rights of the user
and developer are particularly well understood in those cases. It's
frequently simpler to pick a GPL'd package than to understand the license
of a (possibly better) package under a custom license.
The GPL, BSD, and Apache licenses are just as much licenses
with terms to be followed as are commercial licenses with
RAND, royalty-free, or reciprocal terms. Asserting that
a working group should not THINK about licensing and then
recommending particular licenses is a contradiction.
More importantly, this general topic is not salient for this list.
The IPR mailing list
exists for discussion of the IETF's IPR policy, and general discussion
belongs there. Please see the archives before posting, however, as the topics
raised here have been discussed before.
The group can discuss specific IPR issues with proposals before
the working group, but please note that while the IPR forms request
that a new IPR statement be filed for each document, it is widely understood
that successor documents are covered by the statement relating to the original
version. Getting a new one in for each version is busywork, and
this working group has
no time for such busywork. Getting a final copy in before the
documents become
RFCs can be handled at the appropriate time, and I am recommend to the working
group that they let the chairs follow up with the editors and those
who have filed
early statements at that time.
For those of you not familiar with the IETF's IPR declaration site, it
is at http://www.ietf.org/ipr.html. The caller-id original
is covered in this document:
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/microsoft-ipr-draft-atkinson-callerid.txt
with the following licensing declaration:
b) _X__ Royalty-Free, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory License to
All Implementers **
Check here if this commitment to license
is limited solely
to standards-track RFCs ___
I urge the working group to stop fixating on this and go back to reviewing
and contributing to the specifications. This list is intended to focus on
the engineering needed to get its charter done, and we have enough distractions
without raising this spectre from its well-deserved grave.
regards,
Ted Hardie