-------- Original Message -------- Subject: COMPLAINT Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:48:03 +1300 From: Brian E Carpenter Organization: University of Auckland To: campaigns@fsf.org I am seriously angry with the FSF for its misleading and emotional campaign against the IETF. The IETF is engaged in its normal, rational, open process. And what do you do? You publish inaccurate misrepresentations of facts on your site and incent people who have no real grasp of the issues to mailbomb the people who actually bring you the open standards that make a free software regime imaginable in the first place. It would be boring to look for all the errors of fact that you have published at http://www.fsf.org/news/reoppose-tls-authz-standard, but let's just dissect the first sentence: > Last January, the Free Software Foundation issued an alert > to efforts at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to sneak "sneak" is a word typical of emotion-inducing demagogic speech or writing, but it is an absolute untruth. This draft has been vigorously debated in public "at" the IETF (i.e. on open IETF mailing lists) since February 2007 (or earlier), after the RedPhone IPR issue arose. Please see http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg03455.html The word "sneak" is simply untrue, and was presumably chosen for its negative and emotional impact. In many circles, it would be called a lie. > a patent-encumbered standard for "TLS authorization" through a If you actually read the words in RedPhone's latest IPR disclosure at https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1026/, you will discover that it says: "RedPhone Security hereby asserts that the techniques for sending and receiving authorizations defined in TLS Authorizations Extensions (version draft-housley-tls-authz-extns-07.txt) do not infringe upon RedPhone Security's intellectual property rights (IPR). " It is therefore not true that the draft is "patent-encumbered". In many circles, your statement would be called a lie. > back-door approval process that was referenced as "experimental" or > "informational". Informational and Experimental RFCs have existed for many years. They have been part of the IETF process since at least 1992; see http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1310.txt. They all carry a legend such as "This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind." It is therefore not true that this would be either a back-door process, or any kind of approval as a standard. In many circles, your statement would be called a lie. However, as a matter of actual fact, the Last Call that went out to the IETF on January 14, 2009 was not a Last Call for Experimental or Informational status. It was in actual fact a Last Call for Proposed Standard status. See http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg05617.html So, not only is your characterisation of the process as "back-door" false in itself, it also is not even related to the facts of the actual Last Call. In many circles, your statement would be called a lie about a lie. (There was a previous Last Call for Experimental status, back in September 2007. But that did not result in consensus, and was of course before the latest IPR disclosure by RedPhone. Apparently, the FSF was unaware of events since 2007 in "Last January"; I cannot determine whether that refers to January 2008 or January 2009.) All in all, you get a failing grade for accuracy in the first sentence. I don't think I will waste my time on the other sentences. Brian P.S. In general I support free software, but I support truth too. -- Regards Brian Carpenter University of Auckland