Re: Oppose draft-carpenter-ipr-patent-frswds-00

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At 04:24 AM 10/30/2007, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> At 04:48 PM 10/29/2007, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>>"Eric Burger" <eburger@xxxxxxx> writes:
>>
>> > One interesting side effect of the existence of an open source
>> > implementation of a protocol is monoculture.  We ran into a problem in
>> > ifax year ago when it turned out that all eight "independent"
>> > implementations all relied on the same library, thus rendering the
>> > "independent" implementations label difficult, to say the least.  Why
>> > were there no independent implementations?  Because in this case, the
>> > open source implementation was pretty good, and it was not worth
>> > investing in a proprietary implementation.  The result here has a really
>> > bad side effect for the IETF: if there is a good open source, free
>> > implementation, there will be no second implementation, resulting in it
>> > being impossible for the standard to progress.
>>
>>But that is how it is supposed to work!  If there is only one
>>implementation, a standard is not mature enough to move to DS.  You need
>>to have at least two, preferably several more, completely independent
>>implementations in order to quality-test a standard.
>
> but why does one or both have to be open source?
>
> Why can't both be commercial?

DS designates a mature standard.  If you read the requirements in RFC
2026 for a mature standard it is clear that few of the modern IETF
protocols live up to that standard -- you need to demonstrate
interoperability between two completely independent implementations of
_all_ features in the protocol standard.  Another (existing) requirement
is that any patent licenses needs to be obtained through separate
processes.  I believe that a good way to demonstrate that the patent
license process works is to require that a free software implementation
exists.  I strongly believe it should be possible to participate on the
Internet without paying a software patent tax to some organizations.

I believe you are arguing that the ends justify the means. In other words, because all the licensing has to be worked out (to become a DS), you believe a free implementation is the answer. I say it is not. Two commercial organizations can work out licensing and comply with this requirement - but you don't want that to be acceptable. I hold that this is what I'm referring to as "bad for the IETF" because corporations will either start involving themselves less in the IETF (directly affecting the IETF's revenue - which is already too low, and probably adversely affecting corporate sponsorship of meetings - which is already hard to acquire), and/or have fewer corporate participants care about DS and FS RFCs, because there is no incentive for them to do the work.

BTW - if you believe a free (cost-wise) implementation be mandatory for elevation to DS, why don't you suggest the text be changed to say that?


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