Re: clarification on my mic comments on HBA's

[Jari Arkko <jari.arkko@piuha.net>]

john.loughney@nokia.com wrote:

>Just to clarify my comments at the mic. My unease with HBAs is pragmatic
>- I generally
>worry that intellectual property on core SHIM6 specs may cause a
>deployment barrier,
>especially from "open source" implementations.  If this is not a major
>issue for
>folks implementing shim6 specs, then my unease is cleared.
>  
>
#participant_hat_on

Thanks for this note.

I agree that we need to make sure specs with potentially
very wide deployment are possible to implement on open
source. The number of implementation reports that we heard
yesterday perhaps help in assessing what the practical
impact is.

Indeed, that was our intention when Ericsson made
the statement. Previously CGA usage was only free
for SEND implementations. We wanted to make it
possible to use it for free in SHIM6, too. I feel bad
about the statement being taken negatively, given
that we did try help, not disrupt.

In any case, I would suggest that the WG participants need to
be able to differentiate between real IPR concerns and other IPR
concerns. The world, including the IETF, is unfortunately
full of IPR issues. In many situations we are talking about
IPR holders that either refuse to allow use of their technology
or ask an extremely high price for that, or at best employ
so called RAND rules which assure some fairness but still
imply payment.

This is NOT the case here. The license essentially says that
usage is free. There are no restrictions. No money. No need
to contact anyone. No license paper to sign. Nothing. There
is a defensive clause, but that only applies to folks who are
suing other people for their patents. Not sure I want to worry
about the fate to those people.

In any case, to move forward I can ask our IPR department
to make a human readable explanation of what the license
means in practise. This hopefully helps the people in the
WG to make an informed decision. Do you think that would
be useful?

--Jari