First, thanks for your two well written posts. They were the first in
this thread that reflect views that I share. Over the past week, I've
read both the "O" and "C" proposals, and it seems to me they both fail
to properly address the problems you bring up. Consequently, in the
straw poll, I didn't feel convinced enough to vote for either
proposal. At best, they both just miss the point.
I wouldn't go as far as saying IETF is part of the open-source
community. However, I do believe that if IETF no longer provide a
service to the open-source community, IETF will have lost its power in
shepherding protocol standardization. I just wanted to share a data
point to support your argument:
"Eric S. Raymond" <esr(_at_)thyrsus(_dot_)com> writes:
You've had two direct warnings about this -- the ASF and Debian open
letters. They interpreted IETF's passivity on the Sender-ID patent
issue as damage and routed around it. If the IETF doesn't get its act
together, that *will* happen again. The open-source community and its
allies will have no choice but to increasingly route around IETF, and
IETF will become increasingly irrelevant.
Another growing concern in the community is the license used for IETF
documents. The newly adopted copying conditions for RFCs [1] further
restrict borrowing of text from RFCs into free software products. If
that trend continue, or the current rules are enforced to the letter,
free software products will write their own protocol specifications.
They would do so to be able to incorporate derivative works into the
documentation. IETF could rubber stamp those documents, and publish
them as RFCs, but then it would have lost control over the process.
The copying condition issue haven't yet reached critical mass, but
from what I can tell, it is getting closer and closer.
Thanks,
Simon
[1] Compare <http://www.rfc-editor.org/copyright.html> with the real
text in RFC 3667, especially section 7.3. To me, they leave a
significantly different impression. The web page imply derivative
works can be permitted, but according to RFC 3667, the only
organization permitted to produce such derivative works would be
ISOC/IETF.
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