Do you think that the IETF has changed direction though?
Methinks not.
This is one of those issues where there is a faction that will defend the
status quo regardless of the flaws that are revealed. They will wait till the
end of the discussion and announce that there is no consensus to do anything
differently so they must win.
I really do not understand the justification for not allowing a WG to state the
IPR policy that will apply during the charter process. If we are going to have
people volunteer time an effort to create a standard they have the right to
know at the start whether the result will be encumbered or if one particular
party gets to set up a toll booth.
In fact there are two very different status quos. There is the defacto status
quo and there is the de jure status quo. And it is rather interesting that on
every one of my pet IETF peeves, my position is the defacto status quo and it
is only the official status quo that is out of line.
Officially a working group does not need to set an IPR standard up front.
In practice every working group in any part of the IETF I participate in has to
deliver a standard that is compliant with the W3C policy that every essential
part of the spec be implementable without using encumbered technology. Attempts
to do otherwise are totally futile.
I guess it is possible that things are different outside the security,
applications and operations side, but I find it very hard to believe that a
necessary to implement technology at the Internet level could be encumbered
without creating a blogstorm of slashdot proportions.
Officially the specs are in the obsolete text format
In practice they are written in XML and the engineers implementing them use
either the HTML version or buy the O'Rielly nutshell book.
Officially there are three stages in the standards process
In practice there are two stages.
I really wish it was possible to have a discussion on this topic without
getting condescending lectures as to why it is absolutely unthinkable to change
the official status quo when folk are already doing exactly what I have been
suggesting for five years or more.
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org on behalf of TSG
Sent: Tue 2/17/2009 5:42 PM
To: John Levine
Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: Previous consensus on not changing patent policy (Re: Referencesto
Redphone's "patent")
John Levine wrote:
But are the 1,000 or so emails in recent days from the FSF campaign
not a loud enough hum to recognize that our IPR policy is out of
tune?
Are you really saying that all it takes is a mob motivated by an
misleading screed to make the IETF change direction?
Yes - exactly that.
From the sample of the FSF letters I read, many of the people writing
didn't know the difference between Redphone and Red Hat, and if as
many as two of them had even looked at the draft or IPR disclosure in
question, it'd be a lot.
The FSF's absolutist position on patents was set in stone 20 years
ago. I don't see why we should be impressed if they occasionally
throw a handful of pebbles at us.
R's,
John
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