ietf-mxcomp
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Re: Obstacles between us and the finish line

2004-07-14 11:43:10

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, Ted Hardie wrote:

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.

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.

I am sorry that you did not actually read my original mail. I will
rephrase the salient parts of it in the hope of better luck this time.

I request that any protocol standardised by the IETF be entirely free of 
license restrictions in order that implementors clearly understand their 
right to implement the protocol. I specifically oppose the adoption of 
SenderID as a standard since it imposes licensing terms on the user.

More importantly, this general topic is not salient for this list. 

This is not a general topic. This is a specific opposition to SenderID.
SenderID has licensing terms which an implementor must spend time reading
and understanding before implementing, distributing or otherwise sneezing
on SenderID or implementations thereof.

If the implementors do not clearly understand their rights, RAND or
otherwise, then they are unlikely to implement, or implementation will be
divided. We only have to look at the three-dozen competing CDMA
specifications for an example of this.

At no point did I suggest an alternative license, and I do not do so now.  
I propose and recommend the absence of any license or restriction
whatsoever on any eventual protocol.

S.

-- 
Shevek                                    http://www.anarres.org/
I am the Borg.                         http://www.gothnicity.org/