On Thursday, May 30, 2002, at 09:48 , Melinda Shore wrote: > Here's one for starters: there's no guidance on how or whether to > treat differences in licensing terms for competing proposals. It > would be nice to be able to say that all other things being more-or- > less equal we should prefer technology which will be available > royalty-free, Agree. My druthers would be to have an IETF policy explicitly saying that the first choice is to use unencumbered technology if it can be made to work, second choice is encumbered but royalty-free technology, and last choice is "fair and reasonable licence terms" (or whatever the equivalent correct legal wording might be for that last). And it would be good to have a conventional template for the royalty-free licence -- one that the IETF's legal counsel has reviewed and believes is acceptable for IETF purposes. Creating a separate open ietf-ipr@ietf.org mailing list for these discussions would also be helpful, IMHO. Perhaps the IETF Chair could arrange such ? Regards, Ran rja@extremenetworks.com