On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 07:30:24 EDT, scott bradner said: > there seems to be an assertion of evil intent here that is not the case The problem isn't one of current evil intent, the problem is that there's a hole in the tent that an evilly-intented camel could get far more than just its nose through. And implementors are much happier when they live in camel-proof tents.... > I do not see any problem for the open source community unless that > community wants to create a new version of TCP and take parts of > existing IETF RFCs to include in its description of their revised TCP The threat model that is causing the issue is if $BIG_EVIL_CORP creates a document that becomes an RFC, the open-source community implement it, and then $BIG_EVIL_CORP sues them for copyright infringement. And even if the open-source side is in the right, the intimidation of the legal fees needed to mount a defense is formidable. Unless you can easily point and say "section 3.7(b) obviously allows this usage of the text", you're in a grey area that's not a good place to be in a litigious society... Given the current sorry state of intellectual property in the US legal system, I don't blame implementors who ask their lawyers to find which particular lines in the boilerplate give *THEM* (as opposed to the IETF itself) a clear right to use the text in the manner they need to.
Attachment:
pgpatc64mKJDe.pgp
Description: PGP signature
_______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf