[ih] ppp - was Re: "The Great Debate"

[Scott Bradner]

> On Apr 30, 2026, at 12:58 AM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
...

> The PPP WG submitted PPP Compression over a year ago...."
> 
> This was all about IPR claims by a large company. I daresay it was one of the topics during the fine IAB dinner in Stockholm. The IETF hadn't yet figured out how to deal with contentious IPR claims. I think we do better now.

The issue with ppp compression that Brian refers to was that Motorola 
notified the IETF that ppp compression (then an ID) infringed on some of their patents.
At the time the standards process (RFC 1602) required that a patent holder publish a 
license for any patent they claimed impacted an IETF specification - Motorola 
ignored all requests for them to do so.  

Thus, the publication of ppp compression (and encryption) as RFCs was blocked.

This stayed the case until Jon Postel published RFC 1871 - "Addendum to RFC 1602 
-- Variance Procedure"

After which Frank Kastenholz, with proper IESG & IETF review,  published RFC 1915 
"Variance for The PPP Compression Control Protocol and The PPP Encryption 
Control Protocol" which freed up ppp to get published 

The whole story is explained in RFC 1915

it was quite a pain at the time!

Scott  (IESG at the time)