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Re: Shuffle those deck chairs!

2004-10-21 04:25:45
From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr(_at_)thyrsus(_dot_)com>

Let's put an end to these far-reaching interpretations of
"representation", which are a product of Mr. Schryer's fevered brain
overinterpreting my original statement.

Originally, somebody asked that the open-source community get its act together
about what acceptable patent-license terms would be.

I said this: if IETF wants to know what form of patent license will be
acceptable to the open-source community, the people to ask are Richard
Stallman (representing FSF) and myself (representing OSI).

Between us (and especially if we agree), I believe we can speak *with
regard to this question* for 95% of the open-source community.  This
does not make either of us power-mad dictators intent on domination,
just most peoples' recognized experts on what constitutes an
acceptable open-source license.

If either Mr. Schryer or yourself chooses not to be considered part
of that "most people", fine -- the fact remains there are an awful damn lot
of developers expecting RMS and myself to *do* *this* *job* so they don't
have to.

If it existed, that job would conflict with the way the IETF works.
No contributor to an IETF WG or mailing list is supposed be presenting
anything but personal opinions.  When Mr. Raymond writes here about
acceptable patent-license terms, his views get careful reading, but
not because he represents anyone but himself.

If the IETF were to make an exception and count votes on this issue,
then it should weight votes based on relevant open source, since
concerns about patents on parsing C matter less to the IETF than patents
on address prefix lookups and compression.  However, any kind of voting
would be bad.  More and larger (including commercial) organizations
would declare themselves champions of open source and demand votes in
proportion to their programmers, customers, or market shares.


Cripes.  It'd be easier trying to serve a gang of baboons, sometimes...

Many people besides baboons and refuseniks consider it unseemly to
demand gratitude for unwanted gifts, and not only because some political
activites are painfully obvious and familiar.  Being recognized as the
official spokesman for the open source community by the IETF would
help Mr. Raymond's efforts to get the world to believe the phrase "open
source community" is not silly nonsense like "netizen," that it has
spokesmen, and that he is one.


Vernon Schryver    vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com


P.S. I don't entirely agree with Mr. Vixie's patent suggestion.
Requiring that WG participants make such disclosures would be very
nice in theory, but seems as realistic as the IETF simply declaring that
it has opted-out of the patent extortion game.  However, that's all
been said before more than once.


P.P.S. I think this started with concerns about quoting parts of RFCs.
Is there more fire than smoke there?

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