[cabfpub] Reposting on behalf of others

kirk_hall at trendmicro.com kirk_hall at trendmicro.com
Mon Mar 2 11:37:56 MST 2015


Agreed.  So how would you propose we change our bylaws so we can hear from people like Julien?  Would you support an amendment that lets Members repost messages (with permission) that are sent to the Questions@ email address if they think the messages are valid and significant?  Or maybe we create a new email address Comments@ as a public list-serv, and any Member can repost messages that the Member thinks are worthy of consideration by the Members as a whole.

On Eddy’s point – I’m less worried about flame wars if we separate out public postings from Member postings (so the Member postings don’t get submerged).

We clearly don’t want to block helpful and meaningful emails like Julien’s, as there is clearly information out there that can help us make good decisions.

From: Ryan Sleevi [mailto:sleevi at google.com]
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2015 10:05 AM
To: Kirk Hall (RD-US)
Cc: Gervase Markham; CABFPub
Subject: Re: [cabfpub] Reposting on behalf of others



On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 9:56 AM, kirk_hall at trendmicro.com<mailto:kirk_hall at trendmicro.com> <kirk_hall at trendmicro.com<mailto:kirk_hall at trendmicro.com>> wrote:
I have never understood the “IPR issues” or their dangers in the Forum  – I think they are fanciful when it comes to hearing from people not connected with a Forum member.

I guess I can understand concern about letting a Member propose some new requirement for adoption while secretly holding a patent, then springing it on the Members after the requirement is adopted.  Hasn’t happened yet, but I suppose it could.

But where is the threat when a knowledgeable member of the public posts a thoughtful, useful response to the Forum, and the information is reposted to the world because of its usefulness?  Even if the person has secret patents (pretty unlikely), it’s up to all of us to evaluate the information and move forward, or not.  And then if this outside person springs a hidden patent on us, we can just delete any requirement we adopted.

Except our Bylaws are, hopefully, designed to eliminate capriciousness and personal taste.

For example, what if Adrien held some sort of patent or IPR on the use of keys greater than 1024-bits as part of distributed hash trees? Or on schemes for shortening long strings of a particular length into shorter strings (say, SHA-2 vs SHA-1)

Do I think this is fanciful? Yes. However, it's precisely why you setup policies and procedures, and then follow those policies and procedures, so that you don't have to run such hypotheticals every time.


In any case, when you and Gerv argue for more openness (like letting anyone post to some list-serv), what do you have in mind?  Requiring an IPR agreement?  No agreement?  Just an acknowledgment that there is no protection for any ideas posted (I’m good with that one).  If I understand correctly, there is no IPR agreement for posting by the public to any Mozilla list or Google list, correct?

I’d be happy with establishing a separate CABF list-serv where anyone can post (maybe with a one-time click-through that warns people that ideas they post may become public property).  I think it should be kept separate from the Public list-serv just so that postings by members can be found in one place and are not be mixed up with public postings.

In the meantime, I see reposting valuable information to the Public list a very useful thing.

I don't disagree that it's useful. My question is whether it is consistent with our bylaws. If it isn't, then regardless of how useful it is, it shouldn't be done until we fix our bylaws.

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