Re: IETF and open source license compatibility (Was: Re: yet another comment on draft-housley-tls-authz-extns-07.txt)

[" Rémi Denis-Courmont" <[e-mail]>]

On Thursday 12 February 2009 14:39:53 ext Jari Arkko, you wrote:
> I support experiments in this space, though. And it would be really good
> to get more of the open source folk participate in IETF specification
> work. There are many important open source extensions and protocols that
> fit in IETF's scope but were never documented. Even if source code is
> freely available, you could have several implementations, commercial vs.
> open source interoperability issues, etc.

I was an open-source developper before, becoming a Nokia employee and 
sponsored IETF attendee (and I remain one). I was in a software field where 
IETF has high relevance (e.g. Teredo and RTSP). But there was no way in the 
world I could have afforded the travel, accomodation and attendance costs.

Oh, I was one relevant working group mailing lists. But from my experience, I 
was not at all taken seriously, until I started showing up at the meetings. In 
other words, remote participation does _not_ really work, in this venue, and 
on-site participation is often not possible.

Also, open-source is heavily dependent on running code (as are some 
standardization venues such as XSF). IETF is not, or not anymore, although I 
guess this varies from WG to WG. And IETF is very slow compared to the open-
source community.


All in all, I am not surprising that the IETF process is not so popular with 
open-source projects, and I am doubtful we can "fix" that without more 
disruptive changes that current IETFers and their sponsors, would be willing 
to accept.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
Maemo Software, Nokia Devices R&D