On Thursday, May 30, 2002, at 09:48 , Melinda Shore wrote:
Here's one for starters: there's no guidance on how or whether to
treat differences in licensing terms for competing proposals. It
would be nice to be able to say that all other things being more-or-
less equal we should prefer technology which will be available
royalty-free,
Agree.
My druthers would be to have an IETF policy explicitly saying that
the first
choice is to use unencumbered technology if it can be made to work,
second choice
is encumbered but royalty-free technology, and last choice is "fair and
reasonable
licence terms" (or whatever the equivalent correct legal wording might be
for that last).
And it would be good to have a conventional template for the
royalty-free
licence -- one that the IETF's legal counsel has reviewed and believes
is acceptable
for IETF purposes.
Creating a separate open ietf-ipr(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org mailing list for these
discussions
would also be helpful, IMHO. Perhaps the IETF Chair could arrange such ?
Regards,
Ran
rja(_at_)extremenetworks(_dot_)com