Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary

I have a very different view of this situation, and disagree wstrongly 
with John's recommended "fix" (or the equivalent fix of completely 
rolling back 5378 and 5377.)
First and foremost, it should be kept in ming by anyone reading this 
that the IPR working was convened by the then IETF chair, and continued 
by succeeding chairs because there were problems that actually needed to 
be fixed.  There are things that the community considered (and 
presumably still does consider) either necessary or important that are 
not properly addressed by the earlier documents.  This varied between a 
lack of clarity in some areas, and a lack of ability to perform 
necessary actions in other areas.
The working group was not convened just because we wanted to, or even 
because we thought we could make things "better."  If it had not 
appeared that there were significant problems, I for one would have 
taken the much easier course and just said "leave it alone."  And I am 
quite confident I am not alone.
Secondly, giving people a choice of terms is basically going to create 
confusion.  For example, one of the issues raised in the working group 
was that our previous rights grant appeared not to properly allow folks 
to modify code.  And it required them to include things in used code 
that made it hard to use that code in various contexts.  We want to see 
implementations.  We want to see accurate, interoperable 
implementations.  Using the code and tables from various RFC is 
somewhere between necessary and and desirable.
But, if we assume that the folks who were concerned were right, then if 
we give everyone a choice, anyone trying to right code using our tables, 
etc has to figure out what rights they are being granted to use any 
given RFC or I-D.
Yes, there are those who argued that there was no problem.  However, the 
WG concluded that there was at the very least significant confusion, and 
probably an actual problem.
Yes, having to get rights from folks is a pain.
But if we are not willing to push to do that, then we might as well 
consider that the rights granted to the IETF are locked in stone 
forever, and can never be upgraded, because it will never happen.
It should be understood also that some folks actually wanted us to go 
further than we did in 5377.  5378 and 5377 represent the best 
compromise we could work out.  The community is certainly free to decide 
that it doesn't want to do that.
While some folks who were there say that they feel not enough attention 
was paid to this issue, it is the case that we did discuss at least some 
of the impact, and none of what turned out to be needed surprised me.
Yours,
Joel M. Halpern
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