On Fri, 15 Oct 2004, Paul Vixie wrote: > > How can we not adopt some manner of "open source" attitude, Paul? That > > has been the basic methodology of the IETF for some time. Otherwise, we > > would be paying for every DNS lookup. as with this rediculous sender-id issue, which is a blatant attempt by a proven illegally operating monopoly to seize yet another part of the worlds infrastructure with their "i stole it, but its mine, not yours, pay me" mentality. notwithstanding, how can a specification be considered a standard if over half of the operators on the planet refuse to deploy it because of patent/licence issues. > > well, i am not the expert on this, but the discussion has to do with IPR > and change control being transferred to IETF as a side effect of the > publication of drafts and rfc's. historically there have been at least > two approaches: (1) demand IPR surrender; (2) require IPR disclosure. in > the second (and i believe, current) situation, draft authors are required > to state their IPR terms, and RFC readers can infer whatever they like from > the absence of surrender. margaret is saying that sometimes the IPR can > be contested by someone other than the author, and later than RFC publication, > through no fault of anybody's. people can say whatever they choose. if someone wants to write proprietary protcols, go ahead. thats fine. just not as part of the IETF, with the intent to inject corporate control into the open standards of the internet. in order to maintain global interoperability, and prevent the potential for abuse of monopoly position inherent in proprietary software, patent encumerments and other such mechanisms must not be allow to encumber the codebase at any level. > eric is saying that the previous situation > whereby a draft author surrendered the IPR before RFC publication was better. > various others have said "but what if the IPR terms try to distinguish > between commercial and noncommercial?" my observations are (1) there are > ways to do "open source" without this distinction, and (2) authors cannot > be expected warrant their IPR surrender in any case. > the authors must know that the work they indulge in contributes to the global commons that makes up the structure of the internet. IMHO any attempt to limit or restrict the process and methodology that the IETF has created through hard experience of a great many years should fall upon very deaf ears, and be passed off in a "no thank you, we would not like to purchase your software" attitude. > it's a lot more complicated than whether you have to pay for DNS lookups. > right, but if a similar mechanism as in question here were part of the dns, then we would be paying for every lookup, and all of redmond would be laughing. Scott > re: > > > > > ... > > > > The open-source community figured out by about 1997-1998 that there is no > > > > way to discriminate between "commercial" and "noncommercial" activity > > > > that does not create fatal uncertainties about who has what rights at > > > > what times. When you add the problems of mixing software with licenses > > > > having *different versions* of such a distinction the downside gets even > > > > worse. > > > > > > > > Thus, the licensing guidelines of both the OSI and FSF forbid attempts at > > > > this. > > > > > > This only matters if you intend to limit redistribution. The older BSD > > > licenseware limits only liability, not redistribution, and thus doesn't > > > care about details like commerce. This could be a lesson for IETF if we > > > really are going to address IPR issues in the boilerplate by adopting any > > > kind of "open source" attitude. > > > -- > > > Paul Vixie > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Ietf mailing list > > > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > > > https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > > > > > > > sleekfreak pirate broadcast > > http://sleekfreak.ath.cx:81/ > > > > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > sleekfreak pirate broadcast http://sleekfreak.ath.cx:81/ _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf