Re: [idn] NSI Multilingual Testbed Information (fwd)

[James Seng <James@Seng.cc>]

Bill,

Your concern about ACE and Jason's patent is no more than a excuse
against ACE. Once again, you have diverted what supposing a technical
discussion to a policy/patent/business discussion. I repeat what I told
you few months back.

So far, your case against ACE include:

a) Software Patent by Jason which our (idns) lawyers have said it wont
   stand up in a claim due to prior public works. (Jason filed in
Australia
   few months after Martin's -00 I-D.)

b) Business reasons to adopt Microsoft DNS. 

Neither of which is of any technical merits to the WG.

I am not saying patent and propriety standard is not a concern of the
IETF. I am very much against propriety standard myself and I like to see
an open standard defined for IDN. However, there are patents which holds
water and there are patent which does not.

Incidently, I have also followed Mozilla I18N and AFAIK, they have not
discuss any I18N on URL. I was asked by Opera what to do with I18N
domain names in their browser and I told them to do nothing until this
WG work is complete. I made the same recommendation to Sun Java
developers group and IBM folk. So I dont know where you got the
reference on Netscape.

ps: BTW, you just make a strong case why Software Patent should just
***DIE***. There are so many patents out there and it is hard to know
what you do will infridge on someone else prior work. It makes me wonder
whether USPTO's have any clue at all sometimes...

-James Seng

Dogbert: I just patenting the 'zero-click' for online shopping.
Dilbert: What does it do? (continue looking at his computer)
Dogbert: You better start clicking on something or else I send you
         some books.

"J. William Semich" wrote:
> 
> Paul:
> 
> At 11:55 AM 8/26/00 -0700, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
> 
> >>Since we are using UTF-8 for NUBIND and other implementations of
> >>multilingual services in our system, this patent does not affect the NUBIND
> >>and related IDN implementations.
> 
> >The fact that raw UTF-8 sent to applications does not work with a
> >myriad of Internet protocols might affect your choice as well.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> >It would be wonderful if all other
> >vendors had this much commitment to the IETF standards process.
> 
> I'm not sure if you think these two comments of yours are connected or not,
> but it looks like it to me. It is important to point out that NUBIND's
> support for UTF-8, as stated in my earlier comment, is the result of our
> decision to follow current IETF standards for IDN under RFC2277:
> 
>    Protocols MUST be able to use the UTF-8 charset, which consists of
>    the ISO 10646 coded character set combined with the UTF-8 character
>    encoding scheme, as defined in [10646] Annex R (published in
>    Amendment 2), for all text.
> 
> The fact that some "legacy" applications don't support that IETF standard
> is certainly significant, but I'm not going to second-guess the IETF
> decision to select UTF-8 as the standard, and just go off and invent some
> other protocol for a working IDN implementation, live on the Internet, in
> the .NU TLD. That decision, if it's made, is supposed to come out of the
> efforts of this group, right? Meanwhile, NUBIND will stick with the current
> standards...
> 
> If, as the result of activities of this or any other WG, the IETF ever
> changes that MUST to a SHOULD or a MAY, or if it changes it to include an
> ACE that is clean and non-problematic, of course, NUBIND will support that
> as well - as part of our commitment to the standards process.
> 
> >>I'd be surprised if
> >>Microsoft or TimeWarner/AOL/Netscape would be willing to migrate their
> >>browsers to an ACE at this point, especially facing the possibility of a
> >>claim from Pouflis. But since I'm sure both companies have someone in this
> >>WG, perhaps they'd care to comment on the issue?
> 
> >You may find it surprising to hear that Microsoft and Netscape are
> >strongly committed to following IETF standards, but many of us are
> >not.
> 
> Sorry for not making my point clearer here. I don't doubt Netscape and
> Microsoft are committed to following IETF standards and to participating in
> and supporting the standards process (as I noted in my opinion about their
> support for UTF-8).
> 
> The point of this comment was to note that, from a business perspective,
> large corporations are averse to implementing any technology to which
> someone else may hold a patent claim, since their size alone would make
> them a target for legal action. So they may not be strong supporters of
> selecting, as a standard, an ACE technology that may be "at risk." But, as
> stated, that would be for them to comment on, not me. Isn't that the whole
> point of the RFC 2026 disclosure?
> 
> Bill Semich
> .NU Domain