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Richard M Stallman | 1 Mar 2009 22:29
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Re: Call for volunteers to discuss IETF patent policy with Richard Stallman

    > The issue here concerns patents and only patents.  
    Patents are a part of the Intellectual Property Framework that enables 
    the Trade Agreements between the populace of this planet

We will do a better job designing trade agreements in the future if we
avoid the rubric of "intellectual property" in deciding what they
should say.

    "Excuse the patent"?  Ahahahahah - see what I mean. This isnt about 
    being open

Of course not.  I stand for freedom, not openness.  Articles about my
work often describe it in a misleading way which suggests I consider
it "open" or want it to be "open".  I regret if they misinformed you
about this.

	       its a lobbyist effort to kill off patents by excluding 
    patented IP from the IETF standards process.

I think you are talking about software methods and features.  To avoid
gratuitous vagueness it is better not to refer to them as "IP".

Software patents restrict the implementation and use of computational
methods and features.  They threaten the freedom of every programmer
and every computer user, so they should not exist.  But that is not
under the IETF's control.  What IS under its control is whether
to establish as standard a method or feature that people generally
are not allowed to implement.

Meanwhile, I should clarify my previous statement
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Richard M Stallman | 1 Mar 2009 22:29
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Re: Call for volunteers to discuss IETF patent policy with Richard Stallman

    Without debating your point about the terminology, the IPR working
    group was concerned with copyright as well. 

Patents raise an issue of whether people will be allowed to use the
standard.  Copyrights raise an issue of writing a spec that the IETF
can publish.

Both issues are important for the IETF, but aside from that, they are
totally different.  The term "IPR" encourages people to suppose they
are similar, and lump them together.  That is an obstacle to thinking
clearly about the issues.

I won't say it is impossible to resist the influence of the term "IPR"
and think properly about each issue despite it.  But why use a term
that exerts a bad influence?  Better to avoid it.
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TSG | 2 Mar 2009 13:37
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Re: Call for volunteers to discuss IETF patent policy with Richard Stallman

Richard M Stallman wrote:
>     Without debating your point about the terminology, the IPR working
>     group was concerned with copyright as well. 
>
> Patents raise an issue of whether people will be allowed to use the
> standard.  Copyrights raise an issue of writing a spec that the IETF
> can publish.
>   
So what - the IETF can and should issue standards TO ANYONE WHO WANTS 
ONE - it is not the IETF's charter to use its technology process to 
force change in the world, That is the FSF's game. Its also NOT the 
IETF's charter to use its refusal to issue a standard as a weapon.
> Both issues are important for the IETF, 
No BOTH issues are important to the FSF - the IETF already has a charter 
and billions of dollars worth of IP built under those pre-existing 
contractual agreements.
> but aside from that, they are
> totally different.  The term "IPR" encourages people to suppose they
> are similar, and lump them together.  
No it doesn't - it gives Harald a reason for 'suspending me when I point 
out that IPR must by its very definition pertain to patent and 
copyrights equally.
> That is an obstacle to thinking
> clearly about the issues.
>   
No its an obstacle to your points being persuasive - its that brick wall 
FSF keeps running into.
> I won't say it is impossible to resist the influence of the term "IPR"
> and think properly about each issue despite it.  But why use a term
> that exerts a bad influence?  Better to avoid it.
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TSG | 2 Mar 2009 14:18
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Restructuring the IETF standards process... for the benefit of all concerned.

Richard -
Why should the IETF deny a standard to anyone who wanted to undertake 
the process to get one? My argument is that the IETF is community of 
members involved in standardizing network technologies and also the 
processes of that standardization.

I understand the necessity to make proper tools available and support 
the GNU project fully. But I don't believe that the Open Source model is 
the only model for building code on this planet. I believe that the FSF 
models are powerful and make sense for any number of efforts, but the 
IETF is about 'being Fair and Open to all.

The real question is one of global ownership and IP controls - and we 
MUST ask the simple questions as to whether it is the formal stance of 
FSF that the IETF should change so that its IP rules come into alignment 
with the FSF's policies? If so I want to point out that this is a 
policitcal shift and its something that would need to be codified by 
everyone - something that the IETF cannot possibly do at this point. 
That everyone by the way MUST also include all of the pre-existing 
work-products'a authors as well since their IP is directly constrained - 
and the Trust would have to change - in fact how about this - why don't 
we kill off the Trust and make the FSF the Trust itself.

As to the IETF - I propose simply that the IETF should issue standards 
to anyone who completes the process the IETF offers a contractual 
ability to participate in. That of course means any and everyone.

Todd Glassey
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Scott Brim | 2 Mar 2009 14:27
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Re: Restructuring the IETF standards process... for the benefit of all concerned.

Excerpts from TSG on Mon, Mar 02, 2009 05:18:41AM -0800:
> Richard -
> Why should the IETF deny a standard to anyone who wanted to undertake  
> the process to get one? My argument is that the IETF is community of  
> members involved in standardizing network technologies and also the  
> processes of that standardization.

The process is one of _agreeing_ on standards, for the sake of
interoperability.  I think it was Philippe Kahn who said "the nice
thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from".  We
don't want to go there and have had many battles to reduce the number
of potential "standards".
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TSG | 2 Mar 2009 15:00
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Re: Restructuring the IETF standards process... for the benefit of all concerned.

Scott Brim wrote:
> Excerpts from TSG on Mon, Mar 02, 2009 05:18:41AM -0800:
>   
>> Richard -
>> Why should the IETF deny a standard to anyone who wanted to undertake  
>> the process to get one? My argument is that the IETF is community of  
>> members involved in standardizing network technologies and also the  
>> processes of that standardization.
>>     
>
> The process is one of _agreeing_ on standards, for the sake of
>   
> interoperability.  
Right - and when Engineers are presented with a technical problem to 
solve, and they 'negotiate and agree on a common technology description 
to meet that need' its called an technology initiative' not a work of 
Shakespeare.

That meeting produces Intellectual Property in the form of a physical 
description of a process for doing some specific set of functions with 
specific and well documented effects and consequences.And then 
implementing two test cases and running a barrage of validation steps to 
prove that they work properly and that the code works.

In the case of things like NTP it also includes the making available of 
the NTP reference image from ISC.NTP.ORG for instance.
> I think it was Philippe Kahn who said "the nice
> thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from". 
Yeah - and it came from an argument in the main executive conference 
room at Borelund  which Phillipe lost - those were good days in Scott's
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Ray Pelletier | 11 Mar 2009 22:22
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5378 Procedures Fix

Brian & Harald

I have heartburn with the proposed 'fix' to the pre-5378 problem.  It  
has to to with the level of effort
by Contributors and record keeping required to implement the fix.

2.  Procedure

    Definition: In this document, the phrase "prior to RFC 5378" refers
    to IETF Contributions made before November 10, 2008, when [RFC5378]
    became effective.

    Contributors of Internet-Drafts that contain substantial text
    originally contributed to the IETF by other persons prior to RFC  
5378
    have certain responsibilities.

    o  They must identify the source of the substantial text that their
       contribution includes.

I agree with this.  The Trust cannot grant the license to a 3rd party  
without being able to identify the
5378 licensors and the Contributors are in the best position to  
identify the sources.

    o  They, or people helping them, must make reasonable efforts to
       obtain or verify the agreement of the original contributors to
       their text being contributed under the terms of RFC 5378.

I disagree with this.  Of the last 5,000 plus RFCs I understand there
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Brian E Carpenter | 11 Mar 2009 22:54
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Re: 5378 Procedures Fix

Ray,

Firstly, yes, that is a valid point to discuss: do we want to require
a reasonable effort from authors, or do we want the disclaimer to be
used by default? Let's have that discussion in the BOF.

Secondly, I have running code to report. In draft-carpenter-renum-needs-work
we use substantial material from draft-chown-v6ops-renumber-thinkabout-05,
published in 2006. I went through the process of sending email to its
authors, asking for their agreement to post the material under RFC5378
conditions, and they all replied positively within a few days. The effort
was trivial, compared to the other work to produce the draft. So I assert
that a reasonable effort is in fact... reasonable, and avoids the distraction
caused by the disclaimer.

   Brian

On 2009-03-12 10:22, Ray Pelletier wrote:
> Brian & Harald
> 
> I have heartburn with the proposed 'fix' to the pre-5378 problem.  It
> has to to with the level of effort
> by Contributors and record keeping required to implement the fix.
> 
> 2.  Procedure
> 
>    Definition: In this document, the phrase "prior to RFC 5378" refers
>    to IETF Contributions made before November 10, 2008, when [RFC5378]
>    became effective.
>
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Ray Pelletier | 11 Mar 2009 23:50
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Re: 5378 Procedures Fix


On Mar 11, 2009, at 5:54 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> Ray,
>
> Firstly, yes, that is a valid point to discuss: do we want to require
> a reasonable effort from authors, or do we want the disclaimer to be
> used by default? Let's have that discussion in the BOF.
>
> Secondly, I have running code to report. In draft-carpenter-renum- 
> needs-work
> we use substantial material from draft-chown-v6ops-renumber- 
> thinkabout-05,
> published in 2006. I went through the process of sending email to its
> authors, asking for their agreement to post the material under RFC5378
> conditions, and they all replied positively within a few days. The  
> effort
> was trivial, compared to the other work to produce the draft. So I  
> assert
> that a reasonable effort is in fact... reasonable, and avoids the  
> distraction
> caused by the disclaimer.

Given that the likelihood is less than 1% that the document will ever  
be requested to be
modified outside the IETF Standard Process, even this amount of time  
multiplied by
hundreds doing the same is disproportionate to the benefit.

A distraction to adding the notice almost whenever pre-5378 material
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John C Klensin | 12 Mar 2009 00:18

Re: 5378 Procedures Fix


--On Thursday, March 12, 2009 10:54 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<brian.e.carpenter <at> gmail.com> wrote:

> Ray,
> 
> Firstly, yes, that is a valid point to discuss: do we want to
> require a reasonable effort from authors, or do we want the
> disclaimer to be used by default? Let's have that discussion
> in the BOF.

Brian,

Your impressions may obviously be different, but my perception
of the lengthy discussion on the IETF list was that:

-- the community had concluded that requiring authors to make
assertions about the rights, contributions, and perceptions of
others was unreasonable and that imposing any other requirements
that would add to the burden or liabilities of being an author
was not in the community's best interests.  Certainly, we might
encourage authors (and WG Chairs, ADs, and interested
volunteers) who had the time and inclination to track down
others and encourage them to sign off, but requiring that was
unreasonable and requiring any assertions about non-listed
authors (or non-listed contributors) was not acceptable.

-- that discussion was community-wide and reasonably informed
about the issues by the time it ended and consequently trumps
any conclusions the WG reached consensus on, or was claimed to
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Gmane