Re: RFC3979bis section 7 -- hierarchy of preference for licensing

[Ted Hardie <[e-mail]>]

So, I've read the thread to this point, and as I watched I got more and
more niggled with the feeling that it was heading in the wrong direction.

As I thought about why, I realized that the whole of hierarchy of
preference discussion is disconnected from what a WG does:  make
tradeoffs.   A working group faced with technology A with license FOO and
technology B with license BAR is almost never going to pick solely on
license; it's a balance of the benefits of the technology and the
consequences of the license.  Creating a hierarchy of preference for
license terms has a sort of theoretical advantage in that it tells people
who are considering what licenses the IETF likes.  Those people probably
have lawyers with other things to think about it, so I suspect it of being
pretty theoretical, but harmless.

This section, though, does not seem to me good enoughfi  we are going to
state a preference hierarchy.:

   In general, IETF working groups prefer technologies with no known IPR
   claims or, for technologies with claims against them, an offer of
   royalty-free licensing.  But IETF working groups have the discretion
   to adopt technology with a commitment of fair and non-discriminatory
   terms, or even with no licensing commitment, if they feel that this
   technology is superior enough to alternatives with fewer IPR claims
   or free licensing to outweigh the potential cost of the licenses.

I think we need language that says explicitly that the working group makes
the trade-off between the technology's advantages and the license's
conditions.  Otherwise, I foresee WGs with people arguing that technology B
must be chosen because its license is higher in the hierarchy and
acceptable (for some value of acceptable).