Microsoft knows what the issues are, they are receiving comments from
multiple people and sources. The decision on the license is
upto them.
The decision on the standard on the other hand is upto the us.
Actually from a standards process point of view the only body with
actual decision making power is the IESG.
This is not a technical issue, it is the type of issue the IESG should
be involved with instead of making technical comments on the WG
output.
The problem here is that a bad precedent was set with the RSA patent.
There are two types of patent at issue, casual patents and
fundamental ones.
Fundamental patents are very very rare. Perhaps 1 out of 10,000.
They are the patents that describe the only possible way to do
something.
Casual patents are much more common, and will become increasingly
so. They describe one way of doing something, not the only way.
The fear is that a casual patent be turned into a fundamental one
by virtue of it being made into a standard. The RAMBUS concern is
a real one.
This is something that I believe should be decided at the level
of the community as a whole rather than one working group and
further should allow for license terms to be accepted on a
general basis so that we do not have this issue in every case.
We might be able to get further if we knew the reason for Microsoft's
insistence on explicit execution of a contract. They appear to me
to have a concern about notice of the contract terms and believe
that constructive notice may not be effective in achieving
reciprocity.