Re: R. e: ITU document server now costs money

[Karl Auerbach <[e-mail]>]

> > It's my personal feeling that it will not be possible to put all
> > documents "into the public domain" without causing a lot of
> > organizations to have second thoughts about paying for employees to
> > participate in the IETF process.
> 
> We've been doing that thus far from what I can tell -- anyone claiming
> copyright on the documents would have serious problems doing so -- so
> why would this be a new problem?

Nobody outside ISOC/IETF appears to be trying to claim copyright
ownership of RFCs.

Rather, it's the the copyright on submitted documents/e-mail, as well as
patents (whether visible or hidden,pending) on underlying technology, that's
becomming a problem.  I've already had direct experience with a company that
wanted to submit some pretty interesting technology, with full intention of
making it freely available, if it ended up in a standard.  But that company
didn't want to end up in a situation in which the technogy end up in the
public domain should it not be used in a standard.  (Lest this be misread,
that company was apparently working in good faith and not trying to coerce
adoption of its technology.  Rather it simply wanted to have a safe fallback
position should the working group not adopt it.)

		--karl--