Re: Copying conditions

On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 07:30:24 EDT, scott bradner said:
> there seems to be an assertion of evil intent here that is not the case

The problem isn't one of current evil intent, the problem is that there's
a hole in the tent that an evilly-intented camel could get far more than just
its nose through.  And implementors are much happier when they live in
camel-proof tents....

> I do not see any problem for the open source community unless that
> community wants to create a new version of TCP and take parts of
> existing IETF RFCs to include in its description of their revised TCP

The threat model that is causing the issue is if $BIG_EVIL_CORP creates a
document that becomes an RFC, the open-source community implement it, and then
$BIG_EVIL_CORP sues them for copyright infringement.  And even if the open-source
side is in the right, the intimidation of the legal fees needed to mount a
defense is formidable.  Unless you can easily point and say "section 3.7(b)
obviously allows this usage of the text", you're in a grey area that's not a
good place to be in a litigious society...

Given the current sorry state of intellectual property in the US legal system,
I don't blame implementors who ask their lawyers to find which particular lines
in the boilerplate give *THEM* (as opposed to the IETF itself) a clear right to
use the text in the manner they need to.