Subject: [Tools-discuss] cloud/silverLining

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:10:05 +1300

The latter part of this has some valid comments IMNSHO
about user experience with the IETF web site.

   Brian

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Ah, I see the cause of the situation now... (tls-authz situation)
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:01:36 +1300
From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Organization: University of Auckland
To: Robinson Tryon <[email-masked]>
CC: [email-masked]
References: <[email-masked]>	<[email-masked]>
<[email-masked]>

On 2009-02-11 11:44, Robinson Tryon wrote:
...
> 
> I read parts of the document. Then I went to RedPhone's license page
> (http://redphonesecurity.com/license.htm) and tried to read their
> license -- it's pretty complicated, including language such as
> "RedPhone Security will grant royalty-free licenses...to make and use
> the Protocol generally, while at the same time retaining certain
> rights to...[certain] control methods defined herein." The license
> document is beyond the understanding of regular people, and the finer
> details of it are probably accessible only to lawyers.

I don't think that is specific to this license. They are often
very hard to read, and of course so are the underlying patents.
My view is the IETF's procedures are aimed at avoiding the need to
analyze such legal language within the IETF, but there's no
doubt this is a burden for implementors. However, that's a
political and economic problem, that can hardly be tackled by
pin-pricks applied to a standards community that has to live with
existing law just as much as the free software community does.
> 
> I have to admit that I get a bit lost on the IETF website, too. This
> (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-housley-tls-authz-extns-07) appears
> to be the primary page about the draft standard, 

Not really. This being a non-Working Group draft, there's no
WG page to look at. So really you need to look for in the
Internet-Drafts status tracker. Any idiot knows that can be found
at https://datatracker.ietf.org/idtracker/ ;-)

Let me try that again. It's still hard to find the tracker
if you don't know where to look for it, starting from the
IETF home page. It's actually buried in the IESG Activities page.

So, at the relevant page in the tracker:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/idtracker/draft-housley-tls-authz-extns/
you can see the whole history of this draft since the original
publication request in April 2006.

> however I don't see a
> link on that page to IPR disclosures, comments, or legal analysis. If

No, the disclosures have to found separately from the IPR disclosure
page. Actually, adding a link from the tracker to the relevant
disclosures sounds like a Good Idea.

Comments (except for ones in the tracker) have to be found in the
email archives. It's an old gripe of mine that we don't somehow
track all comments on a given draft in a systematic way,
but it's hard to do that when comments arrive with oddball subjects
like "Keep Standards Open", which would defeat pretty much any robotic
sorting.

As already noted, the IETF doesn't do legal analysis. Of course, you
may find some (amateur) legal analysis in the email.

> there could be a single page for a given draft that would include
> links to all relevant versions, IPR disclosures, comments on the
> draft, etc..., I think that it might be easier for both long term IETF
> members and regular people to understand and participate in the
> standardization process. If comments were more tightly coupled to
> drafts, IETF members could focus on drafts they found interesting and
> filter out emails pertaining to drafts in which they held no interest.

That's all true. It turns out to be a pretty challenging IT problem
though. I think your comments are good input for the IETF Tools team.

    Brian

-- 
Regards
   Brian Carpenter
   University of Auckland