Re: proposed audio/video codec text

On 7/7/09 7:03 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 1) Since your proposed text implies that there may be valid reasons 
> not to meet the requirement, according to RFC2119 it should be a 
> SHOULD, not a MUST.

That line of reasoning is only consistent if you think there are never 
valid reasons to produce an implementation that doesn't conform to all 
of a specification. It's difficult (impossible?) to point to RFC2119 and 
get a definitive answer on which of its words would best apply to a 
given situation. I suspect that is an intentional feature of the document.

In the past, I have seen working groups that made harmful compromises by 
using "SHOULD". They placed too much emphasis on implementations and 
devices that were irrelevant by the time the standard was able to fully 
replace the technology that preceeded it. I would prefer to skate to 
where the puck will be, rather than where it is, with the understanding 
that we may need to revisit the requirement after the document has wider 
review as a group working draft.

>
> 2) The patent license/disclaimer for Theora facially appears to only 
> apply to...

With no malice: I am not a lawyer, and I don't understand any of that 
stuff, so I'll skip over it...

> Besides a clarification from Xiph/VP2, another possibility is for the 
> W3C to form a PAG, which could decide this is not a problem in 
> practice. Reducing the requirement from MUST to SHOULD would make 
> related patent claims automatically not Essential Claims, although 
> that argument would also arguably apply to any other codec.

My understanding is that a PAG could be formed after someone makes a 
claim concerning a technology in a group working draft.

- Rob

Received on Wednesday, 8 July 2009 00:48:37 UTC