-----Original Message-----
From: John C Klensin [mailto:john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com]
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 4:32 PM
To: lrosen(_at_)rosenlaw(_dot_)com; 'IETF Discussion'
Subject: Re: [Trustees] ANNOUNCEMENT: The IETF Trustees inviteyour
reviewand comments on a proposed Work-Around to the Pre-5378Problem
--On Saturday, January 10, 2009 22:48 +0000 lrosen(_at_)rosenlaw(_dot_)com
wrote:
FWIW, I am serving pro bono in the public interest, and I hope
everyone else here would also. /Larry
And you have no clients, even clients for whom you are working pro
bono, who have a vested position in the outcome of these discussions?
That is certainly not consistent with things you have said in the
past. My sympathies on your loss of business relationships.
john
Why are such emails tolerated on IETF's discussion list?
I have participated on IETF lists for several years now, trying hard to
respect IETF's culture and norms for civil communication. I learned early on
that everyone in IETF perceives his or her role as an individual serving in
the best interests of the technologies we jointly need. While none of us can
fully leave our hats at the door, we are expected to represent what is best
for the Internet.
As an attorney, it would be improper for me to come here secretly
representing the interests of a particular client, and I suppose John
Klensin's question was meant to determine if I was acting unethically in
that respect when I stated (and signed) my opinions on here. If so, his then
making snide public comments about me or my clients (or supposed "loss of
business relationships") on the list is an implication of either ethical
improprieties or poor business acumen. I don't deserve either.
What is doubly irritating is that an engineer, who himself expresses his own
lawyerly opinions in the public interest when participating in the IPR WG,
refuses to believe that an attorney can have equally pure motives when he
expresses his opinions on the same topics. Is that anti-lawyer bigotry?
Unfortunately, that isn't a constitutionally protected class, just something
that IETF itself ought not to tolerate on its public lists.
I believe I deserve an apology from John, although that may be too much for
a lawyer to ask.
/Larry
P.S. I am an also an elected member of the Apache Software Foundation. I
hope nobody here assumes that my opinions here reflect the official opinions
of that organization either, although I do believe that many individual
members of ASF share at least some of my views.
Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243
Skype: LawrenceRosen
Author of "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and
Intellectual Property Law" (Prentice Hall 2004)
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