Marshall Rose wrote:
As I recall, RAND was explicitly selected over RF because
there are and
will be technologies that are interesting to incorporate in a
system-wide standard approach, and forcing RF terms would
automatically
exclude those. There is enough of a bias in the
participants toward RF
when available, that explicit language requiring it adds no
value and in
some cases actually subtracts value from the process of achieving
consensus.
If what you are asking for is that for every proposal / i-d
that shows
up in the IETF, the IPR holder is automatically required to
provide an
RF license, you really don't understand the reason people
bother with
patents to begin with.
tony - i don't find your last paragraph to be particularly
"helpful". a reasoned argument can be made that patents and
community standards are incompatible. a rigorous study of
the US patent system indicates that the founders introduced
the system in order to serve the public good, by encouraging
innovation, by granting limited monopolies on inventions. it
is unclear if that system is particularly compatible with
community-based approaches such as the IETF where, by
definition, the output is not monopolized.
Clearly from the responses I didn't make my point in that last
paragraph. The original note mentioned VRRP specifically, and in that
case the IPR holder didn't bring the proposal to the IETF. The way I
read that note, the Free Software community believes that the IPR holder
should be required to provide RF terms when someone proposes a similar
technology for standardization.
with respect to your first paragraph, i note that if
technology companies see value in participating in the
standards process, then perhaps it is not unreasonable to
suggest that the IETF consider only RF stuff, and then let
the various IPR stakeholders decide whether the trade-off is
worth it... in other words, if someone has some whizbang
technology, and if they want the imprimatur of a community
such as the IETF, then they can decide for themselves whether
to RF it. if not, they are perfectly free to pursue a
proprietary market strategy.
In general I agree for the case where the IPR holder brings the
technology for standardization. In the case where a proposal shows up
which the group thinks is technically the right direction, but a 3rd
party holds IPR, we can't require RF, but can require the WG demonstrate
that RAND is functional.
for myself, i take no position on the merits of the two kinds
of licensing; rather, i merely note that the issue is
somewhat more subtle than first glance.
Subtle enough that a quick paragraph is easily misread. :)
Tony