Dear Mr. Brown: I am writing to you (and CC'ing the boards members of the FSF, less one whose emailbox I couldn't easily locate) in an attempt to explain to you (and convince you) that 'mass mailings' to the IETF mailing list (or any IETF list) of the sort the FSF has now attempted twice (once back in October, 2007; and again this week) don't work, and are in fact, if anything, _counter-productive_ to the FSF's own goals! The IETF 'members' (since IETF membership is rather a loose concept) are not impressed with numbers, but rather with cogent and well-reasoned arguments - and an argument becomes neither more cogent, nor more well-reasoned, by virtue of being repeated 100 times. The analogy is not perfect, but you need to approach the IETF more like a court: a judge - at least, a good one - is not supposed to be influenced by the number of protestors on the steps of their court; rather, they are supposed to be influenced by the cogency of the arguments laid before them. Refiling the exact same amicus brief 100 times (or slightly reworded) isn't going to have any effect - except to irritate the judge, that they have to plow through them all. Efforts such as the one you have laid out in your recent appeal: http://www.fsf.org/news/reoppose-tls-authz-standard have exactly the same effect. Many thousands of people, many of whom are as busy as your board members, have had their inboxes inundated with a hundred (and more will arrive shortly, no doubt) basically identical messages (either cut-and-paste, or at best, rephrasings, of that initial press release). The natural human reaction is to be irritated - especially since we tried to point out _last time_ you all tried this how ineffective this was. I can pretty much guarantee you that it has _no_ positive influence (as the FSF would view it) effect on the IETF deliberations, and in fact, probably does active harm to the FSF's _own_ goals. That is because the IETF has good reason to react negatively to 'drive-by' email campaigns. How is what the FSF tried substantially different from BigCorp X telling everyone who works for it 'we want standard X approved, please send in email to the IETF list asking for it to be approved'. You wouldn't think that was good, would you? No, I didn't think so. So if the IETF allows themselves to be influenced by one mass email campaign, all we are doing is virtually guaranteeing that we will get more. So we have an active interest is responding _negatively_ to such campaigns. You also need to understand that the vast majority of the IETF are as unhappy about producing encumbered technology as you are; and in general, all else being equal, will much prefer an unencumbered solution. In some cases, after (usually) carefully considering the pros and cons in some detail, we will produce such a technology; but you can take it as read that we have, after due consideration, decided that there are advantages that outweigh that significant disadvantage. The classic example was our use of public-private key-systems while the RSA patent was still active; the factors were complex, but included the power of the idea, the fact that the patent had not long to run, etc, etc. If the FSF wants to have the maximal effect, you should prepare the best case you can make against a particular submission (and simply saying 'encumbered technology is bad' is _not_ a good case; most of us agree with that, and if we have decided to go against that, in a particular instance, we must have had good reasons, and it is _those_ reasons you need to address). Then, send _one_ copy in to the list, where I can virtually guarantee you that it will be read more carefully than an avalance of 'me too' messages. Noel PS: Fellow IETF'ers (CC'd), please, no 'me too' messages to the FSF board members; if you have a good point I didn't make, please send it along, but otherwise, let's extend to their emailboxes the same courtesy we are requesting that they extend to ours. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf