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RE: FW: IETF copying conditions

2008-09-17 18:47:52
Paul Hoffman wrote:
Which SDOs that you participate in want to see other SDOs publishing
*incompatible* versions of their protocols?

Hi Paul, 

Of course none of the SDOs that I work with want to see incompatible
versions. But this turns the issue on its head. Open source and open
standards deal with the freedom to do things, even though we might
discourage people to take us up on that offer of freedom.

So with respect to IETF specifications, the open source and open standards
objective is that the world is *free* to make compatible or incompatible
versions of our specifications. (This is the philosophy that neither IETF
nor Microsoft nor IBM, nor anyone else, is going to be the absolute God of
acceptable software.) I'm sure that good people everywhere will cooperate to
ensure that all good versions of our specifications are compatible, and
cooperative people will be encouraged to remain compatible by virtue of the
quality of our work.

But if anyone, anywhere, for any reason, wants to take an IETF specification
and modify it, open source requires that he be free to do so.

The current proposed IPR policy seems to allow that for "code" but not for
"text" in our specifications. What a burden that imposes to protect people
from freedom!

/Larry  



-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Hoffman [mailto:paul(_dot_)hoffman(_at_)vpnc(_dot_)org]
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 3:19 PM
To: lrosen(_at_)rosenlaw(_dot_)com; ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Cc: ipr-wg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: RE: FW: IETF copying conditions

At 2:43 PM -0700 9/17/08, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
I'm moving this to ietf(_at_)ieft(_dot_)org(_dot_) There are important 
policy implications
here that the entire community should understand before we let the IPR WG
decide for us on a policy so opposite to open source and open standards!

Larry, I'm confused. What about the statement that "We don't want to
see other SDOs publishing *incompatible* versions of our protocols,
period" is the opposite of the policy of open standards (emphasis
added)?

Which SDOs that you participate in want to see other SDOs publishing
*incompatible* versions of their protocols?

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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