Re: Wasting time (Re: draft-ietf-ipr-trademarks-00.txt)

[Simon Josefsson <jas at extundo.com>]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald at alvestrand.no> writes:

> --On lørdag, februar 05, 2005 22:12:46 +0100 Simon Josefsson 
> <jas at extundo.com> wrote:
>
>>> Of course, we could easily waste more than 200 IETF participant working
>>> hours discussing the requirement.....
>>
>> I am sorry you view it as wasting time.
>
> Simon,
>
> in one sense, I regard *every* message on the IPR list as a waste of time, 
> and *every* engineering minute spent in IPR discussions as the same.
>
> They contribute *zero* to getting better engineering specifications that we 
> can use in building a better Internet.
>
> The only excuse I can find for spending any time at all developing 
> procedures for handling of IPR is that not having such procedures makes us 
> waste more time in the same sort of issues on a case-by-case basis - or let 
> us be trapped in situations where we *cannot* do what's best for the 
> Internet.
>
> I regard our job in the IPR WG as *minimizing* the total amount of time we 
> have to spend on the "overhead" of dealing with IPR.
>
> But that doesn't mean I have to call the time spent "productive".

Harald, this seem to be a rather pessimistic or technocratic view to
me.  The IPR issue appear to have a potentially big effect on all IETF
documents.  Minimizing the "wasted" time might thus improve the
Internet as a whole more than any individual technical progress is
likely to be able to.

I would call IPR activities productive, if your mission is a better
Internet, since IPR activities improve the foundation for all
documents.

If your mission is engineering specifications, I would agree with a
more pessimistic view of IPR work, though.  Perhaps my understanding
of what the IETF is about is flawed.

I still believe adopting the following paragraph, that I quoted
initially in this thread, would contribute to prolonging an unclear
IPR situation.

   If no statement has been filed with the IETF about a term or phrase
   that is marked in a contribution as a trademark or service mark it
   is reasonable to assume that references to the term or phrase in
   product text, documentation and advertising material is permitted
   but that using the term or phrase as the name of a product requires
   permission from the holder of the mark.

Perhaps by this we can get back to discussing the document.

Regards,
Simon

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