It appears that Mark Nottingham <mnot@xxxxxxxx> said: >I'm sure that this has been discussed somewhere already, but I object to this text in the draft: > >> Note that there is no requirement for a freely available copy of the reference after the publication of the draft as an RFC, nor is there any >requirement that the copies be provided to the general public. > >This leaves the door open for an arbitrary fee or license being required to implement IETF standards, in direct contravention of its OpenStand >commitments to have "[d]efined procedures to develop specifications that can be implemented under *fair terms*" (emphasis mine) and to "[ensure] a >broad affordability of the outcome of the standardization process."[^1] > >If we choose to allow this, at a minimum the draft needs to contain firm guidelines regarding the terms that such references are available to the >public under -- regarding aspects such as intellectual property licensing, financial reasonableness, non-discriminatory access, and so forth. > >That said, I think we can do better. One of the definitions of 'open standards' is _free to implement_, and I would hope that the IETF aspires to that. There are hundreds of references to other SDO's paid documents in our standards. We have always allowed them. Some recent examples are RFC 9016: 802.1Qcc-2018, needs paid IEEE subscription (computer society membership isn't enough) RFCs 9031-9033: 802.15.4-2015, needs paid IEEE subscription RFC 9043: ISO/IECC 9899:2018, costs CHF 216 RFC 9071: ISO/IEC 6429:1992, costs CHF 216 RFC 9130: ISO/IEC 10589:2002, costs CHF 216 RFC 9134: ISO/IEC 21122-1:2022, costs CHF 216, ISO/IEC 21122-2:2022, costs CHF 173, and ISO/IEC 21122-3:2022, costs CHF 173 Paid documents haven't been a problem in the past, as we can see because we have so many published RFCs that use them. While I sympathize with the preference to use freely available material, requiring that would be a huge and disrputive change to our processes. As Eliot noted, it would rule out most IEEE and ISO documents. Can you say more about why you think the costs would be worth it? R's, John -- last-call mailing list -- last-call@xxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to last-call-leave@xxxxxxxx
