--On Friday, February 07, 2014 22:34 -0600 Jorge Contreras
<cntreras(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
This is essentially a repeat of a discussion that has happened
every few years since the late 1990s. The original idea for
the Note Well (at least *my* original idea) was that it should
simply be a pointer to the IETF IPR policy, which has many
pages of explanation and answers most of the questions that
people have been raising on this thread. It should be
obvious, I think, that a complex process like the IETF's IPR
disclosure procedure can't be fully explained in a couple of
sentences. Any such attempt is bound to be incomplete.
And that, of course, reprises most of the late 1990s (or
thereabouts) discussion to which Scott refers. We also
discussed two other things that have come up on this most recent
thread in slightly different form:
* The enforceability risks inherent in what we referred to in
that conversation as a "shrink wrap" license, i.e., a "you are
sitting here and hence you have agreed" situation. My
recollection is that these various notices and reminders
scattered around the registration process, mailing lists, etc.,
arose from that part of the conversation and were attempts to be
able to get a slightly stronger and more defensible agreement.
* The question of whether, if we provided a superficial summary,
someone could argue that it was the "real" agreement or that it
was all they had agreed to, thereby creating loopholes in an
otherwise complex, but carefully explained, policy.
This being said, there has been a strong desire by many to
have a summary statement that also serves as a pointer to the
real policy. That's what the current Note Well is supposed to
be. It is NOT a statement of the IETF's IPR rules. Those are
contained in BCP 78/79, and anyone who is responsible for
his/her company's IPR and/or compliance needs to read those
and not rely on the summary statement/pointer contained in
Note Well.
But, again, that is a reprise of a very old discussion and,
based in large measure on that discussion, represents a tradeoff
between the desire for and advantages of such a summary and the
risks of someone being able to successfully claim that, despite
our intentions, the summary really is the policy. It seems to
me --from a public policy perspective, not a legal one-- that
the more the summary departs from or exaggerates the actual
rules, the greater that risk becomes. The latter was, IMO, the
main objection to the IESG's proposed change (and to Pete's "ask
for more than the policy actually requires" formulation in
particular) this time, but it seems to me that trimming things
back to a different summary still doesn't solve the potential
problem even if it might improve the risk-benefit ratio.
john
On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 1:46 PM, Scott O. Bradner
<sob(_at_)sobco(_dot_)com> wrote:
oops - reviewing my logs, it was Jorge Contreras not Geoff
Stewart, and John Klensin was part of
the initial (to blame) group