Subject: Patents in the Standard

From: Roy Schestowitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:09:37 +0000

Dear IETF:

There appears to be a show-stopper in draft-housley-tls-authz-extns-07.txt

https://datatracker.ietf.org/idtracker/ballot/2081/

It appears that the proposed standard is patent-encumbered.

1) This violates the EU definition of open standard

2) It hinders, and in some cases, prevents *use*, and use is what
standards are about.  So as such it threatens to impair e-commerce and
general web security

3) It puts the IETF in a bad light to have allowed an apparently patent
encumbered payload to get so far along in the standards discussion

The solution is to remove any items claimed to be patented, or else
follow the EU's requirements for open standard and put in writing that
there are no constraints on re-use.  Grant the copyright and patents
irrevocably, royalty-free for implementation, use and distribution.

- --
		~~ Best of wishes

Roy S. Schestowitz
Freelance journalist @ http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/