Subject: Response to appeal from Dean Anderson dated 26-Dec-2007

From: IESG Secretary <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:21:05 -0500

IESG Response to the claim of Continued Abuse of Process by IPR-WG Chair

Introduction

   On Wednesday, December 26, 2007, Dean Anderson issued an appeal
   claiming continued abuse of process by the IETF IPR WG Chair, Harald
   Alvestrand.

   The appeal is terse to the point of making it difficult to
   understand.  The IESG believes that the appeal covers the following
   points.

   1.  The IPR WG Chair has declared one side of a debate off-topic
   within the IPR WG.  The appeal cites messages addressed to Todd
   Glassey and Simon Josefsson from Harald.

   2.  The IPR WG Chair suspended Todd Glassey for asserting reasonable
   arguments contrary to the viewpoints of the IPR WG Chair and Brian
   Carpenter.

   3.  The IPR WG Chair suspended Dean Anderson for asserting reasonable
   arguments contrary to the viewpoints of the IPR WG chair and Brian
   Carpenter.

   4.  That the two suspensions are contrary to the law governing
   corporations, since a vote of the membership to suspend or expel
   members was not taken.

   5.  The listed actions by the IPR WG Chair represent a pattern of
   harassment and intimidation.

   Dean also proposes a remedy.  Dean suggests the removal of Harald as
   IPR WG Chair.

   Each of these points in addressed in turn.

Declaring one side of a debate off topic -- Todd Glassey

   When the IPR WG was formed, it was an appropriate place to discuss
   the transfer of rights to the IETF.  This topic was discussed at
   length, and it is listed in the IPR WG Issue Tracker as issue #1197.
   The issue was raised by Todd Glassey in February 2006, received
   advice from counsel in March 2006, and was closed in April 2006 after
   an IPR WG Last Call.

   It is clear that the IPR WG considered Todd's alternate model for the
   transfer of rights to the IETF, and that after sufficient discussion,
   Todd's proposal was rejected.  This decision is reflected in the
   current IPR WG documents.

   Despite this history, Todd's postings to the IPR WG mail list
   indicate that he has not accepted the idea that rights are not
   transferred to the IETF; rather, Todd's postings indicate that it
   ought to be self-evident that rights are indeed transferred to the
   IETF.  Todd has expressed this view in multiple ways in many
   messages.  The IESG supports the IPR WG Chair in his decision that
   this issue has been adequately discussed and declaring further
   discussion to be counterproductive and off-topic.

Declaring one side of a debate off topic -- Simon Josefsson

   On the IPR WG mail list, Simon Josefsson has been strongly advocating
   that the IETF should grant licenses in its documents.  Simon wants
   the text and code in IETF document to be easily incorporated in works
   released under open-source licenses, including the GPL.  Simon gained
   a lot of support for his position regarding code, but there was an
   equal and opposite concern.  Unless code can be shown to be free of
   restrictions in license, such as the GPL "copyleft" requirement,
   implementers who were not willing to use copylefted code would be
   unable to use the code given as examples in IETF documents.

   The issue was debated on the IPR WG mail list for a long time, and
   many issues were revisited during the discussion.  Eventually a
   compromise emerged.  Under the compromise, text and code are treated
   differently.  The document text can be copied, extracted, and
   translated, but it cannot be modified.  The code contained in
   documents can be copied, modified, and used without restriction.  To
   offer this capability, code included in IETF documents must be
   unencumbered.  As a result, the doctrine of "no additional copyright
   statements" was upheld by the IPR WG, and the language was clarified
   to state that the submitter must ensure that they are able to warrant
   that no restrictions exist on them being able to make the grant of
   rights involved.

   The IPR WG documents that contain this compromise went to IPR WG Last
   Call, and no issue was raised against this compromise position.
   However, Simon resumed his argument that the IETF should allow GPLed
   code to be included in IETF documents, which would violate the
   compromise.  The IESG supports the IPR WG Chair in his decision that
   this issue has been adequately discussed and declaring further
   discussion to be counterproductive and off-topic.

Suspension of Todd Glassey from IPR WG mail list

   The suspension of Todd Glassey from the IPR WG mail list is the
   subject of another appeal to the IESG.  That appeal will be handled
   separately.

Suspension of Dean Anderson from IPR WG mail list

   Dean Anderson posted messages to the IPR WG mail list containing
   extreme accusations on matters that are not enlightening for the IPR
   WG's active topics.  Following these messages, Harald suspended
   Dean's posting rights.  The suspension message included these words:

   > I have noted that a few messages sent by Dean Anderson
<[email-masked]>
   > to this list were not in a tone expected for conversation on IETF
lists.
   >
   > Dean Anderson is also the subject of an in-power PR-Action:
   >
<
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg01967.html>

   >
   > Under the procedures of RFC 3683, I have suspended his posting
   > privilleges to the IPR-WG mailing list.

   As indicated in the message from Harald, Dean is the subject of an
   in-force PR-Action for the IETF mail list.  This action was taken by
   the IESG, following the procedure in RFC 3683, which also states in
   Section 2:

      If approved by the IESG, then:

      o  those identified on the PR-action have their posting rights to
         that IETF mailing list removed; and,

      o  maintainers of any IETF mailing list may, at their discretion,
         also remove posting rights to that IETF mailing list.

   RFC 3683 imposes no preconditions for removing the posting rights.
   Nevertheless, this action was taken only after Dean posted
   inappropriate messages to the IPR WG mail list.

   The IESG believes that the IPR WG Chair acted properly.  Dean was
   making personal attacks, making convoluted legal arguments, and
   threatening legal action.  The PR-action was instituted to stop these
   derogatory messages.

Contrary to the law governing corporations

   Dean's assertion is based on a theory that the IETF is a membership
   corporation.  Of course, the IETF is not a membership corporation, so
   no such vote is possible.  The IETF has no members.

Pattern of harassment and intimidation

   The IESG finds the actions of the IPR WG Chair, Harald Alvestrand, to
   be consistent with IETF policies and procedures.  All of the listed
   actions were very public.  The IESG finds no harassment or
   intimidation.

Conclusion

   For the reasons provided above, the appeal is denied.

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