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Oppose draft-carpenter-ipr-patent-frswds-00

2007-10-29 12:30:53
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-carpenter-ipr-patent-frswds-00.txt
offers this text as a modification to RFC 2026:

   A specification from which at least two independent and interoperable
   implementations from different code bases have been developed, of
   which at least one is available as free software, and for which
   sufficient successful operational experience has been obtained,
   may be elevated to the "Draft Standard" level.

I oppose this text in any IETF document because it is counter to vendor implementations (*any* vendor implementations) to achieve Draft Standard status of a document, and that's bad for the IETF.

For example, take two vendors: Vendor-A and Vendor-B.

One of the vendor's has legitimate IPR claims on a PS RFC, the other either has a license on that IPR from the inventing vendor, or has implemented it under the IPR claim's royalty-free IPR statement (just as some IPR has in its claim into the IETF).

Some PS RFCs are either very little used or very complicated, meaning they aren't very popular (to the Open Source community) or cost to much (time/money) to develop. So unless someone decides to do the work anyway (which doesn't make sense to require) - the suggested text above prevents both Vendor-A's and Vendor-B's implementations from being considered for elevation of this PS RFC to DS RFC *because* they (for some crazy reason) want to charge money for the products where this implementation can be utilized.

BTW - isn't charging money for products how vendor's stay in business?

The IETF preventing vendors from making money in order for the IETF to consider progressing a PS RFC to DS RFC is completely counterintuitive and will reduce vendor participation in the IETF. As much as some might applaud that result, it will mean either the demise of the IETF (without sponsors and vendor participants attending meetings to pay the bills), or that everything is just fine as a PS - which makes the suggested text above completely useless.

James

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