On 2022-03-09 02:38, Salz, Rich wrote:
Can someone – probably one of the authors, not Ted – why they feel it is necessary to not allow derivative works? In the past there have been many RFC’s that documented existing cryptographic algorithms: Blake2, ChaCha/Poly, etc. None of them say no derivatives.
Yes indeed. I think the IETF is quite good at distinguishing when it makes sense to describe existing practice (as in this case) and when it makes sense to put in a lot of work and discussions (e.g. quic, WEBRTC,...).
The reason it makes sense to allow derivative works is that sometimes (not necessarily in this case, but we don't know in advance), things can change.
I don't like to guess, but it could be that the authors some experience (or hearsay from friends) with another technology standardized in the IETF where there was a lot of discussion, and incorrectly generalized from that.
Another guess would be that there are actual differences between search engines, and the authors were afraid to open this Pandora's box. I don't think this is the case, but if it were, it wouldn't be the IETF's job to "take sides". Some confirmation from other search engines would be desirable.
There's also the point that while the spec text is affected by copyright, the technical content isn't. This is an argument that works both ways, but the most important part I see in it is that it's not worth for the IETF to make an exception to its general policy of allowing derivative works.
Regards, Martin. -- last-call mailing list last-call@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/last-call
