I'm forwarding this at Steven Bellovin's request. I again
apologize if this
duplicates another posting. /Larry
********************
[Larry, I'd appreciate it if you'd forward my response to
the legal-discuss
and license-discuss mailing lists -- I don't subscribe to
them, so my note
probably won't go through.]
Speaking as one of the chairs of the IPR working group, let
me correct a few
points.
First -- this is not a new "proposal" by the IETF
working group. The patent
policy has been in place for many years. It was reaffirmed
most recently in
2003; more on that below. The new document was never
intended to change
patent policy (nor even to reaffirm it); rather, it was
intended to fix some
bugs in the previous copyright policy document and to adapt
to changes in
the administrative infrastructure supporting the IETF.
Second -- structurally, the IPR working group is not allowed
to propose
changes to the current patent policy. We're only allowed to
work on items
described by our charter; see
ht
tp://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ipr-charter.html .
While I realize that a
legalistic, context-free reading of the charter might come
to a different
conclusion, we don't have to wonder about the "original
intent" of the
authors -- as one of them, I guarantee that it was quite
explicitly intended
to have forestall any work on patent policy.
I say that because of the history of this WG. There were
similar calls to
change the IETF's patent policy several years ago. I made
the same response
-- the group was not chartered to change it. But I told the
pro-change
community that when we had completed our assigned tasks, we
would have an
open discussion and consensus call on whether or not we
should recharter to
change the IETF's patent policy. The result -- which I
announced on April
9, 2003 -- was very clear: there was a consensus against any
change. I know
of no changes in the membership or constituency of the IETF,
or the legal
environment within which we operate, that makes me think the
result would be
any different today.
Last -- Larry's note quoted Harald Alvestrand, the other
IPR-WG chair, as
suggesting discussion on an open mailing list. It seemed to
me that Larry's
note could be misread as suggesting that the IPR-WG's
mailing list was an
appropriate venue. It's not -- by IETF policy (and I'll
quote the RFCs if
people want), working group mailing lists are for the
working group's
chartered tasks. As Harald and I both posted to that
mailing in the last
few days, we are not chartered to discuss changes in the
patent policy;
therefore, such postings are out of scope and out of line.
The list is
open, in that anyone can join and and participate in the
work of the group.
It is not open to off-topic postings -- and discussions of
changing the
patent policy are off-topic.
It is, of course, permissible to request rechartering or the
formation of a
new working group. I can tell you right now that neither
Harald nor I will
support such a request at this time. I also suspect that
our AD would not
approve any such request were we to make one, since we're
late on delivering
our currently-chartered documents.
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