At 04:16 AM 13/07/2006, Joe Abley wrote:
On 11-Jul-2006, at 13:44, Jari Arkko wrote: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?I am still confused as to why non-lawyers are being asked to indicate comfort with the IPR issues as a prerequisite to the specifications proceeding, when it's so unclear as (a) whether any indicated comfort really means anything, and (b) how anybody should go about gauging their own comfort when they are not qualified to understand the question. This seems like something the working group should expect the IETF as an organisation to find properly-qualified opinions on. I don'tunderstand why the organisation is instead seeking opinions from self- professed non-lawyers in the working group.
Joe,I appreciate your sentiment, and can only say to you that Kurtis and myself, as the WG Chairs, have raised this matter in a similar style and with similar content with the Area Directors, and, as I informed the WG meeting earlier this week, we were informed by the ADs that this was seen as a matter that was encompassed by the Working Group rough consensus decision making process. i.e. we had to work it out ourselves as a WG. Hence the rough straw poll in the WG meeting on Monday (with approximately equal levels of comfort and discomfort being shown in response to the chairs' query of the working group) and hence the continuation of this discussion here.
I am happy to take your question and refer it to the ADs as being illustrative of the level of comfort of some working group members when being asked to consider detailed IPR matters as they pertain to WG drafts (and have cc'ed the ADs in this response accordingly).
I suspect that the procedural issue you have raised is one that the Working Group cannot readily resolve, given the AD position on this matter. You may want to raise your concern in IETF procedure-related forums, such as the IPR working group (http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ipr-charter.html)
regards, Geoff