On 15-okt-04, at 15:46, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
MMI's primary intention is to protect the research investment that has allowed them to build faster and more accurate cheese graters than the competition.
[...]
Are there any IPR terms that MMI could offer that would meet these goals while also allowing the WRAPCTL protocol to be implemented in OSS implementations? If we could find that middle ground, I think it would be very valuable to the IETF and to the OSS community.
Maybe I'm being naive here, but wouldn't it be possible for NMI to give away a free license to use their patent in the WRAPCTL protocol only? In copyright this is done all the time (although seldom for free): when I buy a DVD, I get to watch its contents at home, but the license doesn't allow me to show the movie in a theater or broadcast it over the air.
In cases where the patent has a broader use than as part of a network protocol this is actually good for the patent holder as now many companies will be implementing it, which can easily lead to reuse of said implementation for another purpose in which case a paid license would be required.
This doesn't solve all open source issues, but it should make the problem more manageable as the code that implements this protocol in question can be reused by anyone, just as long as it's only used for this specific protocol.
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