--On Wednesday, 07 November, 2012 10:23 +0900 Randy Bush
<randy@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> [ my last post on this ]
>
>> But my objective in the question what might be "late" was
>> whether IETF may have defined "late" somewhere
>
> we are [supposed to be] professionals of *integrity*.
> discussion of how far the submarine should be allowed to run
> before it surfaces are the primrose path. as professionals of
> integrity, we should not participate in submarine exercises.
FWIW, I completely agree with this, while noting three things:
(1) If someone decides to try to evade the rules rather than
behaving professionally and with integrity, no amount of
hair-splitting on our part about how the rules are written will
help much. Probably we would just create more loopholes. There
are days that it is too bad we can't recall participants for
non-professional behavior, but that would almost certainly cause
more problems than it would be worth (or would never be used,
convincing those who are inclined to misbehave that the
misbehavior is ok as long as no one moves to kick them out).
(2) The NOTE WELL isn't about the rules -- if someone doesn't
like the rules, they need to convince the IESG to reopen the IPR
WG. It seems to me that George's question is about the rules,
not the NOTE WELL (as are several other comments in the thread).
(3) We know how to fix these problems. It involves abandoning
the IETF's entire "individual participants" model and replacing
it with an organizational model, including explicit, signed,
agreements when an organization wants to participate and
probably a patent policy that requires specific categories of
terms, not just disclosure. I hope we don't go there.
Observation on the text: I think that a change to something that
reinforces the view that the NOTE WELL is a strong suggestion
that there are rules, that they impose requirements, and that
people pay attention to them is a move in the right direction.
The text we've used for the last few years has contained enough
details to leave many people with the impression that it is the
rule set and that actually understanding the BCPs is unnecessary
except as an added reference/clarification. The final
paragraph should, IMO, probably include some variation of the
stock "consult your own legal counsel" statement as well as
advice to talk with various IETF people.
best,
john