Eric - > I said this: if IETF wants to know what form of patent license will be > acceptable to the open-source community, the people to ask are Richard > Stallman (representing FSF) and myself (representing OSI). > > Between us (and especially if we agree), I believe we can speak *with > regard to this question* for 95% of the open-source community. This > does not make either of us power-mad dictators intent on domination, > just most peoples' recognized experts on what constitutes an > acceptable open-source license. > > If either Mr. Schryer or yourself chooses not to be considered part > of that "most people", fine -- the fact remains there are an awful damn lot > of developers expecting RMS and myself to *do* *this* *job* so they don't > have to.
That works fine for the membership of your organization. It is great they have entrusted this job to you. Congratulations. You may be missing a fundamental thing, however. The IETF has *no members* and, despite an impressive org chart and lots of titles, *participants* in the process tend to bristle when anybody presumes to speak on behalf of *the IETF.* We deliverately have a long, slow process based on group consensus and working code. By working code I mean every idea gets implemented so we can see how they work. That's the ideal anyway. > > Cripes. It'd be easier trying to serve a gang of baboons, sometimes... Well, yes, perhaps we are a gang of baboons. You've got a church model of open source with you as pope. That's fine. People are free to worship anyway they'd like. But, why don't you head over to the bazaar and see how the rest of us live? Your baboon analogy is sort of on the mark, however (see [1]). It might not look like we know what we're doing, but if we all keep on typing, maybe somebody will get lucky. Perhaps not as well structured as you'd like, but the results speak for themselves. So, if you don't like the IPR policy, all you can really do is type up an internet-draft with your ideas. Maybe you'll get lucky. But, you're not going to get very far sending yourself or any other church officials in to negotiate with a bunch of baboons. To us, you're just another monkey. Carl 1: http://infinite.simians.net/ _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
