At 4:10 PM -0700 10/18/07, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
Isn't it preferable to get into early battles over IP rules--and make sure
those rules are clear to WG participants--before we have wasted our time and
resources developing specifications that half the world (or more) can't
implement?
I don't know which of the IETF WGs you have been involved with, but
that hasn't been the case for any of the ones I have dealt with.
Could you give an example of an WG in which this would have been
preferable? My experience has been that IPR issues are much, much
more common for work that appears later in a WG's deliverables, not
in the initial work.
Has anyone ever suggested that we inhibit "free discussion of initial
ideas"? Please don't raise silly arguments like that.
It is not a silly argument. Yes, there are a few engineers in the
IETF who like to play armchair lawyer and would love to spend the
initial time of WG formation pontificating about IPR, but they are in
the small minority. Such a discussion would be of no interest to the
folks who want to do good technical work.
Among the most
exciting discussions of ideas are those that come from having to design
around a patent that isn't available for free.
Your view of excitement might differ from the large majority of active IETFers.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf