Subject: RE: What the lawyers and suits think

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 13:06:34 -0700

> From: Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Most importantly, I believe, and a point I perhaps did not highlight 
> pointedly enough, is this:  the lawyers and suits are the corporate 
> decision-makers.  They generally do *not* take the concerns of the 
> technical people into account when making either legal or other 
> corporate decisions. 

I don't recall ever having a lawyer advise me to take a particular
course of action for anything other than purely defensive reasons.

Lawyers are rarely true decisions makers for that very reason, give
them four alternative choices for action and they will provide you
with reasons against five of them.

> It is in this climate that people in this group are saying 
> "but someone 
> who has intellectual property rights to this would _never_ do that, 
> because it would be wrong - or would not be the best for the 
> Internet".  That's horribly naive.

It depends who, you can usually depend on parties to follow their
own best interests. In the case of the largest computer compaines 
that generally means the industry interest as well. 

When it comes to the behemoths we are discussing whether or not
we should risk them acquiring one extra missile, and not a particularly
reliableone at that. This would worry me rather more if it wasn't
for the fact that they already own more than enough missiles to
ensure complete destruction if they go the nuclear route.

> Their motive for wanting a product to be deployed is _very_ different 
> than your motive.  It has to do with marketshare, consumer 
> capture and 
> retention, or, at best, a solution to _their own problem_.  This is 
> true of *any* company, even primarily anti-spam companies, which have 
> moved from garage to office suite, and *particularly* true of those 
> which have moved from "a few guys doing something they care deeply 
> about" to investors and shareholders.  

The folk who have recently moved from garage to VC funded startups
are actually a much bigger threat, they have no corporate interest in
the commons. The established players do.

> My  point, and I do have one, is that the lawyers and suits need 
> to have an 
> epiphany, and need to realize that this is a situation which 
> is turned 
> on its head from what they are used to - that not only do 
> they have to 
> take the concerns of the Geek Front into account - but that 
> without the 
> Geek Front they've got nothing. 

Its called mindshare. A case in point is S/MIME vs PGP. The format
dispute is an irrelevance from a technical point of view, but the
failure of S/MIME to build a deployment constituency and the failure
of PGP to gain industry support has meant that neither has been
a success.

The problem we have here is that the process was only designed to
address the technical issues. It is quite possible to go from start
to finish without having built the necessary constituency for
deployment.

		Phill

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From: "william(at)elan.net" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 13:53:26 -0700 (PDT)

> of PGP to gain industry support has meant that neither has been

You bring a very important example here. I believe it was IETF failure
to achieve consensus and unified standard for signing mail that has 
results in the above deployment issue. We appear to be headed on the same
path based on the announcement by list chairs with their intent to proceed
with both SPF classic mail-from and SenderID PRA scopes without any one
of these scopes having gained consensus by the WG and leaving it up
to the deployment base to decide what would be used. 

This is so much like the S/MIME vs PGP situation (involving same two large 
groups of internet users) that it hurts me see us repeat the same mistake.
I was truly hoping this WG would be able to bring both corporate big boys 
(ala SenderID supporters who also the guys supporting S/MIME) with 
opensource geek camp (ala SPF supporters who are also support mostly PGP).

We really should try to come to one solution that has to be mandated to
be supported by this IETF group (or more then one that should be mandated)
or we'll end up in same situation and the new SPF2.0 will fail in achieving
the deployment in either of the scopes.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
[email-masked]

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From: "Anne P. Mitchell, Esq." <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 14:48:10 -0700

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From: "Anne P. Mitchell, Esq." <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 14:59:41 -0700

> with reasons against five of them.

<laugh>..only five?

Seriously - I can guarantee you that what is going on up in Redmond 
right now is that the _lawyers_ are figuring out what to do about this 
situation (as no doubt are others).  Now, it's likely that they will 
make a recommendation to other suits, so if that's what you meant by 
their not truly being decision-makers, well, yes, I don't disagree - 
perhaps "decision influencers" would be more appropriate a term, but 
don't underestimate the influence of those decisions. I certainly have 
been in situations as an in-house counsel where buy-off on my 
"recommendation" was a formality only, and I was actually the one 
making the decisions.

I'm not about to put words in Harry's mouth here, but I wouldn't be at 
all surprised if people in Harry's position are frustrated by what is 
going on with legal, and would conversely be very surprised if they 
have the ability to do a blessed thing about it.

Anne