Subject: Re: Call for volunteers to discuss IETF patent policy with Richard Stallman

From: Richard M Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:29:46 -0500

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.

---

From: TSG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:37:53 -0800

> standard.  Copyrights raise an issue of writing a spec that the IETF
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
> 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
No its an obstacle to your points being persuasive - its that brick wall 
FSF keeps running into.
> that exerts a bad influence?  Better to avoid it.
Because the history of the IETF is that the ANY AND ALL USES clause 
pertains to both and there is too much standard process IP out their 
under that license to turn away from it.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ipr-wg mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg
>
>

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From: TSG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:18:41 -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.

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

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 14:27:20 +0100

> 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".

---

From: TSG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 06:00:52 -0800

Scott Brim wrote:
> 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 
Valley... Personally I liked the Silicon Valley SW compliers a tad 
better but JBuilder was cool.
>  We
There are implications about liability therein then. Also - you seem to 
think the IETF has a right to control what is and is not routed on the 
Internet - the IETF is a standards process - not a political lobby. Its 
supposed to be a fair process too and one would hope a transparent one 
as well  That said Fair and Open has specific requirements - unless that 
term is being redefined as an IETF custom Term of Art - and then it 
needs to be formally defined.

Further the ISOC also is not a political lobby per their 501(c)(3) 
filing. So doing ANYTHING to effect changes in Law constitutes a direct 
violation of the charter issued to both ISOC and the IETF. If you want 
to ask why - each document published in defiance of the Patent Policy of 
the US Government arguably constitutes a political act, and if a 
majority of the operations of an entity are political in form, then 
their 501 status changes. Only in this case its ISOC's status which will 
change one would think...

That said - the IETF needs to come into immediate alignment with the 
idea that since it forces people to physically implement a 
representative implementation of any Initiative's  vetting work product, 
and to formally interoperability-test it (what ever that means in the 
context of each individual initiative) against another independently 
implemented representative implementation of the IP in the proposed 
standard, that a formal license to produce the test implementations must 
be included. That license cannot discard patent controls.

The IETF does not produce fictional works or any other type of literary 
effort - it produces technical specifications based on a 
joint-engineering development process which it calls VETTING. That 
workproduct it then licenses to people to use to build things in the 
real world with. That said there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to separate the 
IETF's publishing of those specifications and their licensing for use 
beyond just reprinting.

Just my two cents.

Todd