Re: IPR at IETF 54

[Henning Schulzrinne <hgs at cs.columbia.edu>]

>> and if one solution is 120% better technically than another, but
>> has a RAND license associated with it?  What if it's 170% better?
>
>

Marshall Rose wrote:

> working groups make trade-offs all the time between simplicity,
> functionality, and so on. licensing is another cost. given the amount
> of traffic on this topic, it appears that licensing is a very heavy
> cost. this may provide an answer to your question...
>

Unfortunately, while we can compare proposals based on their complexity, 
maybe even performance or overhead, there is, in reality, usually no way 
to compare the actual licensing costs at the time a decision is made. At 
least as far as I know, none of the non-free licensing statements on the 
IETF web site contain any information on these terms, beyond vague 
generalities. "Reasonable" is hardly a term with engineering precision.