Re: [Gendispatch] I-D Action: draft-halpern-gendispatch-antitrust-00.txt

["Joel M. Halpern" <[e-mail]>]

We wrote this as guidelines, not rules, because there are always some 
edge cases.

But that list (which you quote below) is I think the list almost every 
lawyer I have talked to about this gave me to start with.  If you are 
talking about any of those things, you need to be VERY careful.  Which 
is also why we suggest talking to your own lawyer if you are going to 
venture into those spaces.

Yours,
Joel

PS: I appreciate folks are starting to look at this draft.  All comments 
more than welcome.  If this is going to advance, it needs community 
discussion and I hope eventually community support.

On 9/3/2021 7:04 PM, Rob Sayre wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I think I understand the motivation here, but I'm not sure the text is 
> right.
> 
>    " As the IETF is a standards development environment where
>     representatives from competitors are highly likely to be present,
>     participants should not discuss the following topics:
> 
>     *  product pricing
>     *  profit margins
>     *  business relationships between specific vendors and customers
>     *  details of particular supply chains
>     *  specific market opportunities
>     *  employee compensation or benefits
> 
>     While not all discussions of these topics would necessarily be
>     antitrust violations, prudence suggests that avoiding these topics
>     altogether best mitigates antitrust risks."
> 
> So, clearly, using an IETF list to agree on pricing is not appropriate 
> (and not very intelligent, imo).
> 
> But, is it wrong to point out "business relationships between specific 
> vendors and customers" in evaluating an I-D? I am not sure that is the 
> case, and this draft seems to preclude such discussion. How else would 
> one raise venue-shopping or rubber-stamping?
> 
> thanks,
> Rob
> 
> On Fri, Sep 3, 2021 at 3:24 PM Stephen Farrell 
> <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     Hmm. I think "should not discuss" and that list are too high
>     or the wrong barrier. I reckon it'd take some discussion to
>     get that right. I don't object to trying to get it right, but
>     would object to the current text.
> 
>     As an example, it seems to me entirely fine to (carefully:-) discuss
>     the
>     fact that a thing(*) is unencumbered as far as
>     we know and how that affects implementations that might use
>     that thing, especially those taking an open source approach.
> 
>     Cheers,
>     S.
> 
>     (*) s/thing/codec/ or s/thing/encryption alg/ both work with
>     differences.
> 
>     On 03/09/2021 23:07, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>      > Thankyou for this draft. Assuming the question will be put, I
>     strongly support dispatching it ASAP as an individual submission
>     sponsored by the General AD.
>      >
>      > I have one suggestion. The Recommendations very correctly list
>     'product pricing' as a forbidden topic. That should probably be
>     'product and service pricing'. However, a topic of technical
>     importance in service provision is *metrics* used for measuring
>     services. I think the draft could usefully discuss the dividing line
>     between technical specifications of metrics (OK), mechanisms for
>     communicating metrics (OK), mechanisms for communicating pricing of
>     metrics (presumably OK), worked examples with example monetary
>     values (presumably OK) and actual monetary values (not OK).
>      >
>      > FYA:
>     https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-carpenter-metrics-00
>     <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-carpenter-metrics-00>
>      >
>      > Regards
>      >     Brian Carpenter
>      >
>      > On 31-Aug-21 13:42, [e-mail]
>     <mailto:[e-mail]> wrote:
>      >>
>      >> A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line
>     Internet-Drafts directories.
>      >>
>      >>
>      >>          Title           : Antitrust Guidelines for IETF Particiants
>      >>          Authors         : Joel M. Halpern
>      >>                            Brad Biddle
>      >>                            Jay Daley
>      >>      Filename        : draft-halpern-gendispatch-antitrust-00.txt
>      >>      Pages           : 6
>      >>      Date            : 2021-08-30
>      >>
>      >> Abstract:
>      >>     This document provides guidance for IETF participants on
>     compliance
>      >>     with antitrust laws and how to reduce antitrust risks in
>     connection
>      >>     with IETF activities.
>      >>
>      >>
>      >> The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
>      >>
>     https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-halpern-gendispatch-antitrust/ <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-halpern-gendispatch-antitrust/>
>      >>
>      >> There is also an HTML version available at:
>      >>
>     https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-halpern-gendispatch-antitrust-00.html
>     <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-halpern-gendispatch-antitrust-00.html>
>      >>
>      >>
>      >> Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
>      >> ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
>     <ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/>
>      >>
>      >>
>      >> _______________________________________________
>      >> I-D-Announce mailing list
>      >> [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>
>      >> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce
>     <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce>
>      >> Internet-Draft directories: http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html
>     <http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html>
>      >> or ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1shadow-sites.txt
>     <ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1shadow-sites.txt>
>      >>
>      >
>     -- 
>     Gendispatch mailing list
>     [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>
>     https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/gendispatch
>     <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/gendispatch>
> 
>