--On Monday, January 12, 2009 17:24 -0500 Russ Housley
<housley@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> John:
>
> I think that the cover note from the Chair of the IETF Trust,
> Ed Juskevicius, included the vast bulk of the information that
> you are requesting.
Russ, I think your note addresses several more of the issues I
was concerned about than Ed's note did. Assuming that your note
represents the consensus of the Trustees where that is relevant,
I don't see any reason to quibble about that point.
More to the point, while I think I disagree with parts of your
analysis, the disagreements, if any, are in areas that should
not block progress at this point, i.e., I can live with your
interpretation without any need to dispute those differences.
I do have a comment on (3) in context...
> (3) "with the advice of Counsel, we believe that this fix
> represents
> a competent, best-efforts, legal-text representation of that
> principle
> and nothing else".
>
> The cover note does not address all of these points. The
> Trustees did seek legal advice, and Counsel fully support this
> work-around. As you might imagine, Counsel was heavily
> involved in the discussions as well as the words themselves.
> The Trustees are trying to provide a near-term work-around
> within the current BCPs and nothing else.
Good. However, what I was looking for was assurance from Counsel
that he had done an in-depth analysis of the language and
concluded that it was both necessary and sufficient to address
and solve (or work around) the problem. That is different from
"supporting the work-around", "involved in the discussions", etc.
Ekr's recent note points out part of the problem that I believe
that Counsel should have caught (and would have caught if asked
the right question). The intent, as ekr and I understand it
and as I think your and Ed's note indicated, was to eliminate
the requirement that authors make any assertions at all about
work other than their own, much less requiring that they
guarantee those assertions. Perhaps, for a document some of
whose text predates 5378, I am certain about the origins of all
of the text and can make assertions about it and about whether
or not everyone has signed off. But, if I am not, I should not
be required to make assertions, one way or the other, that
require that I claim and take responsibility for, complete
knowledge. Even if I am willing to take responsibility for
identify all of the relevant Contributors, unless there is a
compelling reason that I haven't heard yet, we should not be
requiring authors to search the Trust's archives to determine
who has signed off, who has not, and whether the statements they
made in signing off are sufficient to meet the conditions of
5378 as modified by the workaround.
So I strongly support the general thrust of ekr's proposed
modified text rather than the text as posted. If a change is
made that is consistent with the general principle that authors
who know that they are working on documents that contain
pre-5378 text, text about which others might make claims, do not
need to make any affirmative assertions at all about the IPR
status of that other work.
john
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