Hi John,
At 11:31 10-05-2012, John C Klensin wrote:
participate in any way in an affected WG. I hate the idea of
the community getting embroiled in accusations and
counter-accusations but one advantage to a working IPR policy
(as well as general openness) of publishing the blue sheets is
I am fine either way with the handling of the blue sheets. I am also
fine with whatever the IESG decides (on this topic only :-)). This
topic has been sold as a matter of openness. The question can be
traced back to newspaperization. In those days, propagation of
information was localized. Nowadays, it can be globalized. That can
be good; it can also be bad.
The scrawls from the blue sheets will be accessible after around a
month. Should the world be able to find out that:
(i) you were in Paris
(ii) you attended the EAI session
Now let's assume that the work is covered by one of your
inventions. Although you were in that session according to the blue
sheets, you did not participate in the discussion according to the
minutes (the analogy is that you are subscribed to the mailing list
but you have not posted any messages). Do you have to file an IPR disclosure?
Coming back to being open and transparent, the IETF tends to have a
variable stance on that. Exposing information allows other people to
evaluate fairness, whether there is conflict of interest, etc. It
does not always work out well; some people may be unhappy, offended
or uncomfortable. If you look at the list of WGs being tracked, you
will notice that some people provided the information, some
didn't. I didn't ask why. As a quick thought, I guess that people
are uneasy with the idea of the information being publicized to the
world or they used the default, this information is not relevant to
any random person.
Let's ignore the IPR argument. What question(s) should one ask in
setting the boundaries for open and transparent?
Regards,
-sm