RE: draft-bradner-rfc-extracts-00 and the risk of "false RFCs"

I don't disagree with the principle that says that IETF standards should not
be changed by each implementer. My email was not well phrased. I meant only
to suggest that (1) as Stephane Bortzmeyer pointed out, onerous copyright
restrictions won't suffice to prevent the evil you see, and (2) trademark
protection can work to establish the authenticity of IETF standards. So if
you don't like forking, discourage it in a way that is compatible with
software freedom. Use trademarks to protect the "official" standard, and
don't restrict the freedom to copy and modify software.

/Larry

Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, technology law offices (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242  ●  fax: 707-485-1243
Author of “Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom 
               and Intellectual Property Law” (Prentice Hall 2004)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Sommerfeld [mailto:sommerfeld@sun.com]
> Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 11:29 AM
> To: lrosen@rosenlaw.com
> Cc: 'Stephane Bortzmeyer'; ipr-wg@ietf.org
> Subject: RE: draft-bradner-rfc-extracts-00 and the risk of "false RFCs"
> 
> On Fri, 2005-02-18 at 13:40, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
> 
> > There is no threat to anyone from modification of
> > RFC documents after they are published,
> 
> I don't think that's supportable; the threats posed by carelessly or
> maliciously modified RFC's include at the very least end user
> confusion and failure of interoperability.
> 
> The latter is particularly offensive to the core values of long term
> IETF participants.
> 
> 						- Bill

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