Subject: PPTP draft

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 12:15:27 -0700 (MST)

I noticed that the most recent announcement of the PPTP draft carries
this label:

    A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts
    directories.  This draft is a work item of the Point-to-Point
    Protocol Extensions Working Grou p of the IETF

Is that an accurate label?  PPTP is not a "work item" of the working group
is it?  Isn't PPTP Microsoft's originally and still essentially proprietary
protocol, competing with the PPP tunneling protocol, L2TP, which is in
fact a "work item" of the working group?

Note also that the draft says it will be informational, and it contains
the following restriction:

    This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
    all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 except for the right to
    produce derivative works

Those words, despite their "in full conformance" gloss, seem to say that
the document describes a proppriary protocol.

I do not suppose that this is an example of the widely reported large
company tactic of "assimilate and pervert" (or however it was phrased),
but a more distant obvserver might think so, particularly given the
competative histories and business targets of L2TP and PPTP.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to change the announcement of the draft to not
give the false impression that Microsoft is now in control of the PPP
working group or that proprietary protocols are now being produced by the
IETF?

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]