draft-housley-tls-authz-extns-07.txt to Proposed Standard

[Ralf Weber <[e-mail]>]

Moin!

I haven't been aware of this draft before the FSF encouraged some  
people to send there opinion into the IETF mailing list. This isn't my  
first post to an IETF mailinglist and I am subscribed to this and  
other lists on the IETF, so I do think I qualify as IETF participant.  
I did spend some time reading the draft, the IPR disclosure and before  
stating an opinion it would be nice if the people that have dealt with  
it longer could tell me if what I got out of it is correct so far.

1. RedPhone Security applied for some patents that we are talking  
about here in 2005
2. RedPhone Security then authored/co-authored a draft in 2006
3. This could no be successfully processed within the TLS WG
4. The draft was then submitted as individual submission
5. The IESG did not approve the document because of an IPR disclosure  
that has been removed as of now
6. After two years the authors try to again standardize the same draft  
that was declined two years ago with a new IPR disclosure
7. While the IPR may not be relevant to the draft (IANAL) I do not see  
how an useful implementation could work around it:
	- The draft is about extending TLS to authorize before the secure  
connection is established
	- Authorizations are usually done by exchanging and comparing secrets/ 
certificates
	- This is exactly what points 3 and 4 of the IPR disclosure describe

If all of the above is mostly correct I would say that the fact that  
there is no royalty free license available for implementors and there  
are a lot of TLS implementations available under FOSS licenses, which  
could not implement this without violating RedPhone's IPR would lead  
me to the conclusion that I have to oppose this draft.

So long
-Ralf
---
Ralf Weber
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