Subject: RE: Reminder: Some people do not want their input to be widely distributed

From: "Powers Chuck-RXCP20" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 17:01:19 -0600

I believe that more than one company will, in fact, respond in
exactly that manner. Even if they do not stop contributing, they will
think more carefully about what they contribute, and where. The primary
reason is that a lot of work is behind those contributions, and giving
anyone the ability to go out and use that contribution as a basis for
documenting something different than the standard devalues that work.
For those who are trying to make money by selling compliant products
(and yes, there are some out there), this could be a major disincentive
to contribute to a standard, and keeping folks out of the process would
result in an inferior standard.

   For example, if Company A makes a contribution to the IETF, their
primary interest is in seeing that standard become 1) complete, and 2)
successful. If someone takes the IETF documentation and uses it to
document (and thus support) a product which implements a variation to
the specification, then the efforts that Company A put into drafting the
contribution, and the development work that was behind it, are
undermined. While I know there are those who (mistakenly) think that
changing how the protocol works in their implementation must be, by
default, an improvement, there will be many who will disagree. Some may
see forking as an "improvement", but to Company A, which put a lot of
work into contributing to a _standard_, it is no improvement to see
their work used to undermine that standards effort. While the open
source community appears to thrive on this model, many do not, and
shouldn't have to, in order to participate in standards work in the
IETF.

   Forking is not just a standards problem, either. Company A may also
plan to use the text of that contribution in their own documentation of
their products, as is their right to do so. However, allowing Company B
to legally strip the text out of an RFC, modify it anyway they wish, and
then use it to document their own product, potentially giving the
impression that their products are compatible, is not something Company
A would find a positive benefit of standards work. If Company B is
compliant with the standard, fine - that is the point. But if Company B
is building something different, but can make it look as if it is the
same, then again Company A's development efforts are undermined, because
their competitor was able to use their work against them (so to speak).

   Bottom line is that some will think twice before contributing to the
IETF, if their contributions may be stripped out of the resultant
standard, and used to document something else.

regards,

Chuck

  -----------
 
Chuck Powers, Corporate Standards Office
Motorola, Inc
phone: 847-576-4594
mobile: 847-208-0413
text message: [email-masked]
 
[email-masked]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Harald Tveit Alvestrand
> Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 6:56 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Reminder: Some people do not want their input to be 
> widely distributed
> 
> 
> Just a reminder....
> 
> Brian Carpenter took away from the IPR WG meeting a task to 
> get someone to 
> explain in a coherent fashion why some companies would react 
> to the IETF 
> saying "anyone can copy and modify anything" by telling their 
> engineers not 
> to provide input to the IETF.
> Or that's what I understood from his remarks at the close of IPR.
> 
> We haven't heard that argument yet.
> 
> 
> 
>                   Harald
> 

_______________________________________________
Ipr-wg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:18:19 -0800

Chuck WOW - someone else speaking of the value and cost and the IETF's
responsibility to maintain a proper and fair set of processes that are open
to all...

OK - want to know what has to change? - simple - the workflow as to what
vetting is and how many participants at a minimum it takes. That means that
there is a need to standardize what the IETF Standards Process is, in much
more granular terms than it currently exists in.

Also to allow for all standards to be comparable, it seems like some
reliable and reasonable set of milestone markers should be defined so that
the whole overall process  can become a cafeteria check-list and not
something that is 'voted' on by anyone, including the IESG. The entire
concept of peer-voting to create a standard or to make any formal award is
too easily subverted without very strong and methodical controls in place.
And considering what people are really talking about here - the business of
what is routed on the networks of the world, there is a lot of money at
stake too.

I speak in this professionally as someone that audits commercial company's
and I have been saying here for years that the IETF desperately needs a
formalized process and framework for what constitutes a formalized
initiative and well it probably wont be a one size fits all - but rather
"pick 8 of the following ten milestones to achieve" in any Imitative, and
that would constitute the vetting and promulgation or promotion to the next
stage whatever that meant.

My point is that the IETF's WG's are not vapor, and there is critical
financial value involved here, which means people can suffer and be damaged.
And it is this that needs to be addressed and prevented in the IETF's
operations. The IETF can no longer rely on it being too unwieldy to sue it
as a form of protection.

By the way - just as an observation, contributions to the IETF have to date
been intended for standards development process and so were made for
publication and not IP or developmental rights in many cases... (i.e. any
RFC's or I-D's published under RFC2026 or earlier controls). This is a key
issue since it really means that the IETF owns none of the core IP it
contracted to publish in these documents, or the revised IP vetted in its
groups. What it owns is the right to publish the work-product and
proceedings and that is about it so far.  That means at the very least that
the IP still belongs to the group that vetted it or that introduced their
work in this area to the WG in the first place (IMHO) ... Ewww.

This gets even messier by the way when the trust is involved since the value
of things are what they are ...

Todd Glassey

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Powers Chuck-RXCP20" <[email-masked]>
To: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 3:01 PM
Subject: RE: Reminder: Some people do not want their input to be
widelydistributed

regards,

Chuck

  -----------