Subject: RE: Okay, I give

From: "Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 11:45:12 -0800

> There are de-jure and de-facto standards, and information flows freely
> betweeen the two.  Open source is a de-facto standard which either
> will or won't flow into the IETF's de-jure standards.  Trying to force
> the issue is a fruitless waste of my and your time.

The distinction between de-jure and de-facto standards is largely bogus.
The only "de-jure" standards are those whose compliance is mandated by
law, such as for example some safety standards. Many people also
classify as de-jure some standards that are issued by an organization
whose constitution is based on some kind of government mandate or
international treaty, e.g. ANSI or ITU, even if general compliance to
ANSI or ITU standards is not mandated by any law. But the IETF does not
produce "de-jure" standards under any of these definitions; in fact, the
IETF will occasionally publish competing standards for achieving a given
functionality. (Given the past history, "de jure" is some kind of a slur
in the IETF.)

-- Christian Huitema

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From: [email-masked] (Bruce Perens)
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 12:49:23 -0800 (PST)

From: "Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]>
> The distinction between de-jure and de-facto standards is largely bogus.

That is probably true for IETF. At W3C, there is a very important
distinction to a de-jure standard. Their standards will now be part of
an enforcible legal framework that assures that the actual working group
participants and the broader corporate membership of the standards body
will not attempt to place intellectual property restrictions in the way
of implementations of the standard.

The IETF structure and its IPR rule implementation give us no such assurance.

Consider the viewpoint of a business person that can't compel the rest of
the industry to cross-license - that is probably any but the 10 biggest
tech players. For such a business, there is much more confidence that an
implementation of a W3C standard can be carried out without undue legal
risk, and without "reasonable" royalties that become unreasonable when
they are combined and force a product into unprofitability.

	Thanks

	Bruce