Re: Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-bradner-rfc3979bis-05.txt

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

>> Another way to look at it, it seems to me that the real obligation is
>> already (and has been) well defined in 5.1.1 A:
>>
>>>  A. Any Contributor who reasonably and personally knows of IPR meeting
>>>       the conditions of Section 5.6 which the Contributor believes
>>>       Covers or may ultimately Cover his or her written Contribution
>>>       (other than a Contribution that is not intended to be used as an
>>>       input into the IETF Standards Process), or which the Contributor
>>>       reasonably and personally knows his or her employer or sponsor may
>>>       assert against Implementing Technologies based on such written
>>>       Contribution, must make a disclosure in accordance with this
>>>       Section 5.
>>
>> Why is the above not sufficient?
>
> Good point; maybe we are simply trying to say too much.

Indeed, on "say too much".  It's absolutely clear to me that there are
things we need to clarify.  But let's be careful how we go about that.
 If our goal is to make the rules ungameable, we will fail.  If our
goal is to make the rules a perfect (or close to that) defense against
people who are determined to behave badly, we will fail.  Our goal
needs to be to make it very clear how we want people to behave.

And then, as I said on the mic at the BoF, we need to balance the
damage caused by a few people behaving badly against the damage caused
by making rules that drive away productive, desired participants
because their lawyers won't let them enter the room.

I'm perfectly happy to wield a twibil when someone pretty obviously
skirts the rules to sneak something by.  I'm perfectly happy to give
people the benefit of the doubt on that most of the time.  I'm not at
all happy when someone says, "I can't participate in the FUBAR working
group at all, because the IPR rules are too broad."

Barry