At 4:10 PM -0700 10/18/07, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
Isn't it preferable to get into early battles over IP rules--and make sure those rules are clear to WG participants--before we have wasted our time and resources developing specifications that half the world (or more) can't implement?
I don't know which of the IETF WGs you have been involved with, but that hasn't been the case for any of the ones I have dealt with. Could you give an example of an WG in which this would have been preferable? My experience has been that IPR issues are much, much more common for work that appears later in a WG's deliverables, not in the initial work.
Has anyone ever suggested that we inhibit "free discussion of initial ideas"? Please don't raise silly arguments like that.
It is not a silly argument. Yes, there are a few engineers in the IETF who like to play armchair lawyer and would love to spend the initial time of WG formation pontificating about IPR, but they are in the small minority. Such a discussion would be of no interest to the folks who want to do good technical work.
Among the most exciting discussions of ideas are those that come from having to design around a patent that isn't available for free.
Your view of excitement might differ from the large majority of active IETFers. --Paul Hoffman, Director --VPN Consortium _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf