Subject: Re: Last Call: draft-ietf-rmt-bb-fec-raptor-object (Raptor Forward Error Correction Scheme for Object Delivery) to Proposed Standard

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 09:43:39 +0200

Hi,

The document appear to contain several pages of "random numbers" and
"systematic indices", page 32-47
<http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-rmt-bb-fec-raptor-object-08.txt>:

,----
| 5.6.  Random Numbers
| 
|    The two tables V0 and V1 described in Section 5.4.4.1 are given
|    below.  Each entry is a 32-bit integer in decimal representation.
| 
| 5.6.1.  The table V0
| 
|    251291136, 3952231631, 3370958628, 4070167936, 123631495, 3351110283,
|    3218676425, 2011642291, 774603218, 2402805061, 1004366930,
|    1843948209, 428891132, 3746331984, 1591258008, 3067016507,
|    1433388735, 504005498, 2032657933, 3419319784, 2805686246,
|    3102436986, 3808671154, 2501582075, 3978944421, 246043949,
|    4016898363, 649743608, 1974987508, 2651273766, 2357956801, 689605112,
|    715807172, 2722736134, 191939188, 3535520147, 3277019569, 1470435941,
|    3763101702, 3232409631, 122701163, 3920852693, 782246947, 372121310,
|    2995604341, 2045698575, 2332962102, 4005368743, 218596347,
| ...
`----

I'm not familiar with this technology enough to be able to tell if these
tables can be generated easily through some algorithm, and/or whether
that algorithm is even described in the document.  Help?

If the tables need to be incorporated into an implementation in order to
implement this technology, I believe the copyright license for the table
should permit such extraction into implementations.  One approach to
solve the problem, which has been successfully used in several RFCs, is
to include text such as this (quoting RFC 3492):

   Regarding this entire document or any portion of it (including the
   pseudocode and C code), the author makes no guarantees and is not
   responsible for any damage resulting from its use.  The author grants
   irrevocable permission to anyone to use, modify, and distribute it in
   any way that does not diminish the rights of anyone else to use,
   modify, and distribute it, provided that redistributed derivative
   works do not contain misleading author or version information.
   Derivative works need not be licensed under similar terms.

One could alter the text, for example to change 'pseudocode and C code'
into 'pseuedocode and data tables' (the document appears to also contain
several instances of pseudocode, and my comments apply to that part as
well) to make it more applicable.  One can also restrict the
applicability of the liberal license to just the pseudocode and data
tables.

Thanks,
Simon

The IESG <[email-masked]> writes:

> The IESG has received a request from the Reliable Multicast Transport WG 
> (rmt) to consider the following document:
>
> - 'Raptor Forward Error Correction Scheme for Object Delivery '
>    <draft-ietf-rmt-bb-fec-raptor-object-08.txt> as a Proposed Standard
>
> The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
> final comments on this action.  Please send substantive comments to the
> [email-masked] mailing lists by 2007-05-15. Exceptionally, 
> comments may be sent to [email-masked] instead. In either case, please 
> retain the beginning of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.
>
> The file can be obtained via
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-rmt-bb-fec-raptor-object-08.txt
>
>
> IESG discussion can be tracked via
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi?command=view_id&dTag=12920&rfc_flag=0
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> IETF-Announce mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce

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