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

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 01-May-26 01:22, Frank Kastenholz via Internet-history wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Apr 30, 2026, at 8:12 AM, Scott Bradner via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> 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!
> 
> "Ditto"
> 
> And, if I recall, besides being a clear case of IETF-sclerosis, the
> PPP compression and encryption issue was a driving force for
> developing RFC1871 and other efforts to make the process
> more efficient.

I think the most important learning from that whole episode was
"If the process is the problem, fix the process", which at that
time was something the IETF could do much better than either ISO
or the CCITT (i.e. ITU-T). That's less true today, even though
we've finally got RFC2026bis on the stove, with Scott once again
an author.

     Brian

> 
> Frank (Internet AD at the time)
> 
>>
>> Scott  (IESG at the time)
>>
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