Sam Hartman <hartmans-ietf@xxxxxxx> writes: >>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Josefsson <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > Simon> I don't care strongly about the standards track status. > Simon> However, speaking as implementer of the protocol: If the > Simon> document ends up as informational or experimental, I > Simon> request that we make an exception and allow the protocol to > Simon> use the already allocated IANA protocol constants. That > Simon> will avoid interoperability problems. I know the numbers > Simon> are allocated from the pool of numbers reserved for > Simon> standards track documents. There is no indication that we > Simon> are running out of numbers in that registry. Thus, given > Simon> the recall, I think the IETF should be flexible and not > Simon> re-assign the IANA allocated numbers at this point just > Simon> because of procedural reasons. > > Would you support publication on the standards track given the IPR > situation as someone who has implemented? If the patent concern is valid and covers TLS libraries or other applications, no. However, as far as I am aware of the public information that is available, the situation appears to be that we don't know whether these patents apply and to what extent. I don't know whether the patents were filed in good or bad faith. More information from the patent holders may help here. If it is possible to implement the protocol without violating the patents, I would support publication. I've seen some claims that this may be possible. I have no interest in reading these patents myself, but my position would be influenced if someone knowledgeable reads the patents. Given the amount of patents out there, it would be unreasonable for us to move everything to informational just because someone finds something that may be relevant to a piece of work. The community needs to evaluate patent claims, and preferably reach conservative agreement (rough consensus is not good enough) on whether we should care about a particular patent or not. Input to that community evaluation process may be documentation of legal actions taken by a patent owner. Sometimes that may happen only after a document has been published. I would support down-grading standards track documents that later turn out to be patent-infected to informational. Doing so would avoid sending a message that the IETF supports patented technology, when the IETF community didn't know about the patents at publication time. For credibility of the process, I believe it is important that these decisions are only made based on publicly available information. /Simon _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf