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]

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From: Karl Fox <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 14:40:58 -0500

>fact a "work item" of the working group?

You are correct; PPTP is not a work item of the PPPEXT working group.

Karl Fox <[email-masked]>

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From: Karl Fox <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 14:40:58 -0500

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From: Glen Zorn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 13:07:22 -0800 (PST)

On Mon, 15 Feb 1999, Karl Fox wrote:

> >is it?  

I suppose that that depends upon how you define "work item".  The draft is
the work of WG members, and it was submitted for review by the WG.

> >Isn't PPTP Microsoft's originally and still essentially proprietary

PPTP is not "Microsoft's" protocol; it was the product of an industry
group including Ascend and USR, among others.  The group included
Microsoft.  L2TP is in large part derived from PPTP and L2F (a proprietary
cisco protocol).

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From: Glen Zorn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 13:07:22 -0800 (PST)

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From: Glen Zorn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 13:28:32 -0800 (PST)

> the document describes a proppriary protocol.

Vern, please pay attention!  The words you object to are taken directly
from 1id-guidelines.txt and are _required_ to be present (actually, you
have three choices of conformity to RFC 2026 - the sentence used was
recommended by Scott Bradner for use in Informational RFCs).

> competative histories and business targets of L2TP and PPTP.

In case you hadn't noticed, the two Microsoft employees listed as
co-authors of the PPTP draft are also listed as co-authors on the L2TP
draft.  Does that mean that L2TP is a Microsoft plot, too?  No, wait --
there are two cisco names on L2TP too  -- must be a cisco plot.  Get a
life!

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From: Glen Zorn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 13:28:32 -0800 (PST)

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From: Steve Coya <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 16:43:51 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

Greetoings,

>>the work of WG members, and it was submitted for review by the WG.

An Internet-Draft is either a work item of an IETF WG, or an individual
submission. "Work item" means the document is a product of, or under the
auspices of, an IETF Working Group.

The only significant impact of being a WG work item is that the document
appears on the Working Group's Web page.

Steve

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From: Steve Coya <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 16:43:51 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

Greetoings,

Steve

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From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 13:52:39 -0800

>the work of WG members, and it was submitted for review by the WG.

The draft is listed on the WG's charter page at 
<http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/pppext-charter.html>. Given that the 
charter doesn't have any goals or milestones, but does list a zillion 
drafts and RFCs, I think the definition of "work item" in this context is 
indeed much less clear than it is in other WGs.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

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From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 13:52:39 -0800

--Paul Hoffman, Director

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 17:03:28 -0500

> there are two cisco names on L2TP too  -- must be a cisco plot.  Get a

I think Vernon's complaint is that it's difficult, given only the verbiage
in the I-D itself, to disambiguate 2 cases:

1) This is an I-D developed by people from Corporation X, intended to be
an open protocol etc etc etc.

2) This is an I-D written by people from Corporation X, documenting a
widely-deployed but prorietary protocol developed by Corporation X.

I think we went through this with the RFC1094 and RFC1813 regarding NFS,
which seems to have ended up with RFC2339 being issued.

Vernon, did I summarize your position clearly?
-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Computer Systems Senior Engineer
				Virginia Tech

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 17:03:28 -0500

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From: Glen Zorn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 15:42:38 -0800 (PST)

> an open protocol etc etc etc.

If the etceteras include giving change control to the IETF, then that
sounds like a standards-track document to me.

> widely-deployed but prorietary protocol developed by Corporation X.

Given that the document in question is pretty clearly marked as
Informational, I really can't see the need for such disambiguation: it is
not, nor will ever be an IETF standard so does it matter if is "open" or
"proprietary"?

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From: Glen Zorn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 15:42:38 -0800 (PST)

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 06:58:45 -0500

> which seems to have ended up with RFC2339 being issued.

I believe the issues with NFS were quite different. The problem in
this case had to do with insuring that the IETF kept change control
over a Standards Track document. 1094 and 1813 are informational
documents; RFC 2339 clears the way to put NFS on Standards Track.

Thomas

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 06:58:45 -0500

Thomas