Given I did when I was heavily engaged in IETF spend quite a lot of time on
trying to get some common understanding (default rule), but failed, let me jump
in and urge people to please be careful with what wording you use.
I see words like Open Source, Patent, IPR-encumbered etc. And even if people
where careful with being careful when they say for example "patent" when in
fact they are worried about "licensing terms", there are as we know different
definitions of "open source".
I think personally what IETF (still) need are default licensing terms for what
could be viewed as "an open standard". Which of course is not all RFCs but a
subset of them. The terms I think people agree should be such that one can
implement whatever the standard requests, in the way it is specified in the
standard, without any need for explicit licensing from whoever might hold the
rights for the invention. On top of that, it should be possible to get an
explicit license if whoever is to implement what is specified in the standard
wants one.
Many defensive licensing terms we have seen attached to RFCs do in fact have
terms which are very close to something like this, but of course the devil is
in the details.
I do though not we will be able to move forward if people for example are
really scared and scream about patents, because if nothing else we have trolls
out there that will do whatever they can to use whatever weakness the system
has.
I do think it is right though to run and scream about licensing terms.
Then open source...I am personally a person that enjoy BSD like licensing that
gives complete freedom of doing whatever one wants with some source. I know
others have other views. But that is yet another discussion. Which might be
what this thread was to be about. :-P
Patrik
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