At 22:06 25/05/2004 -0400, David Maxwell wrote:

Hi All,

First of all, I'll introduce myself. My name is Fernando Gont. I'm 
currently part of the TCPM WG. However, even when I have read Randall 
Stewart's draft, I have not been involved in all the dicussions that have 
been going on on this issue. (I've been working on other (and unrelated to 
this) drafts.)


> > That said, there is unhappiness in the TCPM working group about this,
> > and they may opt for a different solution.

There's some discussion in the TCPM WG on which path to follow. There is at 
least an alternative proposal, submitted by Joe Touch (which I have not 
read, though).
You can find Joe's draft at: 
http://www.isi.edu/touch/pubs/draft-touch-anonsec-00.txt
You should be able to find it in the drafts directory, too.


> > But the IETF as an
> > organization can accept either outcome here.
> >
> > Beyond that, it's not clear that Cisco is patenting the product
> > of the "work with the community".  If they did, they'd be legally
> > obligated to include all of these people as co-inventors, and any one
>
>I didn't say they were patenting the product of "work with the
>community" - I said that they worked with the community (and as you
>noted, other people dislike their actions too) got the RFC out, then
>declared it patentable.

Note that, AFAIK, it's still a draft, not an RFC.
I realize, however, that this draft has been referred to as "IETF/Cisco 
solution to the TCP vulnerability", at least in the press.

BTW, I have read there's a different fix to this vulnerability, which was 
designed/implemented by the OpenBSD guys. Does anyone have any pointers to it?


--
Fernando Gont
e-mail: fernando@gont.com.ar || fgont@acm.org