Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@xxxxxx> writes: > It is not sufficient to make it an open standard (by your criteria, Java > or PDF would be non-proprietary). The most important criteria is the > fact that the specification is NOT controlled by any given private > entity. If you go look at the documents that Stuart posted references to, you will find: | 21. Copyright Notice | | Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). | | This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions | contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors | retain all their rights. For the purposes of this document, | the term "BCP 78" refers exclusively to RFC 3978, "IETF Rights | in Contributions", published March 2005. In other words, they're exactly as controlled by a given private entity as any other IETF work. Is the IETF a private entity? Is SMTP controlled by the IETF? I think your criteria doesn't survive logical scrutiny. If other people have access to the standard, can implement the standard, and can build on the standard to create a newer revision of it, I can't imagine what definition of "proprietary" you're using that would apply. -- Russ Allbery (rra@xxxxxxxxxxxx) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf