On 09/16/2013 02:20 PM, Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:
I have doubts myself, doubts that I shared with the IESG that this
question is really needed. Asking this question at the end of the
process after the conformance with BCP 78 and BCP 79 was explicitly
declared with each version of the I-D submitted seems redundant.
It is redundant. Deliberately so though, since as stated earlier
we have seen cases where it did result in IPR declarations being
made by long-time IETFers who'd forgotten old filings. In at least
one such case we had to re-do an IETF LC, but it all did work out
to the satisfaction of the wg in the end. From memory, I think
we've seen about 3 IPR disclosures because of this question in the
last year. So its not solving a huge problem, but it does catch
a few things that'd be missed otherwise.
It
is probably intended to cover some corner cases where contributors
forgot particular disclosures, or disclosures happened after the last
I-D revision was submitted, or some of the authors on the authors
list were not involved directly in the latest submitted revisions of
the I-D. As WG chair however, as long as the question is formulated
under its current format in the shepherd write-up form, I feel that I
cannot responsibly answer to it without asking the authors.
As shepherd, you do have the option of saying "I didn't ask
Glen because I know it really annoys him and I know what his
answer will be" or "I asked the authors, and all's well but
Glen didn't respond but we know the question annoys him."
To quote Gonzalo: Responding with a "yes, per the draft's
boilerplate" should take only a few seconds
Yeah, I agree. But its inevitable that a redundant bit of
process stuff like this irritates someone, so we should all
(incl. irritated parties:-) live with that and not make a
deal of it.
And lastly a question for Glen: Say a co-author of yours
was prompted by this question to make a late IPR disclosure.
While that's a low probability event, (about a 1% chance
or so maybe), would that be better or worse than the
disclosure not happening or happening after the draft had
gone further in the process?
If it'd be better then I don't get why you think its a
problem that we double-check. (Or is there a better way
to double-check that would not be as annoying?)
If it'd be worse, (i.e. better to not know) then I don't
get that.
FWIW, much as I think most of the IPR we have to deal with
is nonsense, I still think its better for us to double-check
and get the IPR disclosures when we can easily do another
IETF-LC.
S.