Hi John,
At 06:11 19-08-2013, John C Klensin wrote:
I think this is bogus and takes us down an undesirable path.
Ok.
First, I note that, in some organizations (including some large
ones), someone might be working on an open source project one
month and a proprietary one the next, or maybe both
concurrently. Would it be appropriate for such a person (or the
company's CFO) to claim the lower rate, thereby expecting those
who pay full rate to subsidize them? Or would their involvement
in any proprietary-source activity contaminate them morally and
require them to pay the full rate? Second, remember that "open
The above reminds me of the Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich. If I
was an employee of a company I would pay the regular fee. If I am
sponsored by an open source project and my Internet-Draft will have
that as my affiliation I would claim the lower rate.
source" is actually a controversial term with some history of
source being made open and available, presumably for study, but
with very restrictive licensing rules associated with its
adaptation or use.
Yes.
Does it count if the open source software is basically
irrelevant to the work of the IETF? Written in, e.g., HTML5?
Do reference implementations of IETF protocols count more (if
I'm going to be expected to subsidize someone else's attendance
at the IETF, I think they should).
This would require setting a demarcation line. That isn't always a clear line.
A subsidy is a grant or other financial assistance given by one party
for the support or development of another. If the lower rate is
above meeting costs it is not a subsidy.
Shouldn't we be tying this to the discussion about IPR
preference hierarchies s.t. FOSS software with no license
requirements get more points (and bigger discounts) than BSD or
GPL software, which get more points than FRAND, and so on?
No. :-)
Regards,
-sm