Re: BOCU-1 spec

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Sun Feb 18 2007 - 20:54:36 CST

  • Next message: Jonathan Coxhead: "Re: VS: "Universal Character Set""

    On 2/18/2007 12:43 PM, Frank Ellermann wrote:
    > Doug Ewell wrote:
    >
    >
    >>>> There was a decision made at a recent UTC meeting to withdraw PDUTS
    >>>> #40 and keep BOCU-1 at the UTN level
    All PDUTS ("Proposed Draft") documents clearly state that the
    information in them is not final or stable. The purpose of a draft is
    review, not implementation or documentation, and in this case the review
    exposed issues with the way the IP was handled.
    >>> Is that publicly documented somewhere, who voted, name, reason,
    >>> timestamp, or similar ?
    >>>
    >
    >
    >> It's contained within the pre-preliminary minutes of UTC 110, which
    >> are available only to members. It was a consensus decision.
    >>
    >
    > Thanks for info. I take it as "real standards have an RFC number" :-|
    >
    No, what it means is that "proposed drafts" are not "standards".
    >
    >>> Or as IETF RFC, after all it's already a registered IANA charset.
    >>>
    >
    >
    >> I think it would be interesting to see how IETF handled the IP issue.
    >>
    >
    > Known IPR have to be submitted, in theory a straight forward procedure,
    > and for this case it should be also clear in practice, the authors know
    > that IBM claims some IPR.
    >
    Well, that pretty much describes the process used by Unicode as well,
    but it turned out to be not so easy. The conditions under which the IP
    license was offered appeared to leave it to the discretion of the IP
    owner as to who to issue a license to, and there has been at least one
    documented issue with a licence refusal. The membership of the
    consortium concluded that such issues prevented this specification from
    being published under a Unicode imprimatur and withdrew the draft.

    If IETF or any other body publishes such specifications with these kinds
    of IPR issues unresolved, that only shows that such standards have lower
    levels of guarantees for implementers than Unicode is willing to accept
    for its standards. Perhaps it is a hallmark of "real" standards to be
    defective in that regard.

    A./



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