On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 4:29 PM, Melinda Shore <mshore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I think the problem here is that the FSF issued > an action alert that contained an awful lot of > misinformation, and its minions did what they were > asked - they posted an "opinion" of a document they > clearly hadn't read. A lot of people fired off a quick email, probably hoping that they'd have an effect similar to mass-email campaigns to their federal representatives. By bringing support in numbers, they were trying to have a meaningful impact to stop the publication of a draft that, to their limited understanding, was potentially patent-encumbered. But please remember that a large number of the people who emailed the IETF list are probably just regular people who use Free Software -- people who often have a daily struggle to try to get their software to work with proprietary protocols and file formats, and they just saw this as one more time when another "bad" protocol was going to become a standard, and then become yet another incompatibility headache for them and all other Free Software users. Is this draft document actually going to disrupt end users immensely? Probably not, but without a much clearer interface to the IETF website and mailing lists, regular people aren't going to stand a chance of figuring that out on their own. > > This was an effort by another organization to get a > large number of IETF nonparticipants to send email > to the IETF. I understand that we want to encourage > people to be interested in our documents and let > us know what they think but for heaven's sake they > deserve to be dismissed out-of-hand if they haven't > even bothered to read the thing for which they're > trying to block publication. I read parts of the document. Then I went to RedPhone's license page (http://redphonesecurity.com/license.htm) and tried to read their license -- it's pretty complicated, including language such as "RedPhone Security will grant royalty-free licenses...to make and use the Protocol generally, while at the same time retaining certain rights to...[certain] control methods defined herein." The license document is beyond the understanding of regular people, and the finer details of it are probably accessible only to lawyers. I have to admit that I get a bit lost on the IETF website, too. This (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-housley-tls-authz-extns-07) appears to be the primary page about the draft standard, however I don't see a link on that page to IPR disclosures, comments, or legal analysis. If there could be a single page for a given draft that would include links to all relevant versions, IPR disclosures, comments on the draft, etc..., I think that it might be easier for both long term IETF members and regular people to understand and participate in the standardization process. If comments were more tightly coupled to drafts, IETF members could focus on drafts they found interesting and filter out emails pertaining to drafts in which they held no interest. While we're talking about confusing websites, RedPhone's license page lists this link (https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/ipr_detail_show.cgi?ipr_id=833) for their IPR notice. Unfortunately, that entry has been removed from the IPR tracker, giving a "This IPR disclosure was removed at the submitter's request" message. Would it be possible to link that entry to a more recent IPR disclosure such as #1026? (I'm not sure if they're the same disclosure or not, nor why the content was removed in the first place if RedPhone is on good terms with the IETF) As I was one of the participants in the salvo of emails from the FSF, I do apologize for stuffing your email box with yet one more comment about patent concerns in the tls-authz draft. I didn't just send off a canned response -- I researched the situation before sending my email in, and I'd appreciate it if IETF members took the time to read it. I hope that in the future the IETF can find ways to be more accessible to regular users, providing greater education to people about what the IETF does and how they do it, and obviating the need for mass email campaigns. Sincerely, -- Robinson _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf