Draft letter to ITU-T

Folks,

The draft letter is below. ITU-T meeting starts on Feb 5.
I have to send it to the rapporteur by the end of next week.
If there are comments, please do soon. If possible, I would like to
collect them by Jan 30(GMT) and circulate the final one on Jan 31.
Sorry for the tight deadline.

Please note that there is one paragraph in which John, Ned and Patrik
already confirmed the content with regard to IPR issue.
It starts with "The IAB does not make ---". 

Regards,
--
Hiroshi Tamura, Co-chair of IETF-FAX WG
E-mail: [email protected]


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TITLE:	Communication from IETF FAX Working Group

CONTACT:
Hiroshi Tamura (Co-chair of IETF FAX WG)	Tel:	+81-46-228-1743
Ricoh Co., Ltd.					Fax:	+81-46-228-7500
2446 Toda, Atsugi, Kanagawa, 243-0023, JAPAN	E-mail:	[email protected]

APPROVED BY:
FAX Working Group with Claudio Allocchio (Co-chair of IETF FAX WG)


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This letter is to nofity the current status of IETF FAX Working Group,
with regard to TIFF-FX, Implementers Guide and Terminal Mode that ITU-T
commented in the communication of SG16 meeting in June 2001.

1 TIFF-FX

Fax WG has been trying to move it to Draft Standard for long years.
Last year there were IPR and compatiblity issues that our group
had to solve before that.

1.1 IPR
The IPR issue was claimed by Adobe (TIFF holder) about TIFF itself.
Adobe was one of the contributors of TIFF-FX, but changed the stance
for the use of TIFF. Fax WG and IESG (Internet Engineering Steering
Group - managing WGs) asked IAB (Internet Architecture Board -
IETF's oversight body) for consultation.

At the Dec. 2001 IETF meeting, IAB, ISEG and WG reached the consensus
that Adobe's claims were regard as inconsistent with the mailing lists
records. FAX WG agreed to the Draft Stadard process, as usual.

The IAB does not make formal decisions about IPR issues. As a matter
of fact, it appears clear that Adobe authorized the uses in TIFF-FX, 
and lately sent out communication which might either mean they changed
their mind about the previous authorization, or now they intend to 
restrict these uses all along. In any case, the timing of their latter
actions appears to be against the common practice of reasonable people,
and violating both the letter of RFC 2026 and what are normally considered 
good industry practices. The IETF believes that one cannot violate a 
patent, or, in general, licensing provisions, by standardizing a 
technology, but eventually only by using that technology. The IETF FAX
WG concluded that TIFF-FX technologies have been implemented and deployed
without effective interference from Adobe, and thus there is no bar,
under IETF procedures, to moving the specification to Draft Standard status.

Regarding the IPR issue, the Application Area Directors (members of IESG:
Ned Freed and Patrik Faltstrom), in agreement with the IETF FAX WG,
have also declared in the above paragraph.

1.2 Compatibility
The other issue is compatibility one for the use of image/tiff MIME
content type for Profile J (JBIG), C (Color), L (JBIG color) and M (MRC)
for some TIFF readers. Therefore, our group has decided to use two MIME
content-types, the current image/tiff for Profile S (MH) and F (MR, MMR)
and a new image/tiff-fx content-type for other Profiles,
when transported by MIME.

The internet-draft "draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-reg-01.txt" describes the
new content-type and the registration. Also, there are two internet-drafts:
draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-11.txt (TIFF-FX specification itself) and
draft-ietf-fax-tiff-regbis-04.txt (TIFF registration).

The IETF December meeting agreed that the target date for TIFF-FX to be approved
as Draft Standard is September 2002. FAX WG is now trying to move the process.

Fax WG understands that T.37 refer some related RFCs. Therefore,
after the new documents are approved, our group will submit it to ITU-T.


2 Implementers Guide

The internet-draft was already approved by IESG and was in RFC-editors'
queue (i.e. waiting for publication) before December meeting.
But, as the above, our group has decided to use the two content-types
for the file format. As the result, our group agreed that the use of
content-types should also be described in the guide. Now, there is
a updated internet-draft "draft-ietf-fax-implementers-guide-08.txt",
which includes the description and refer "draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-reg-01.txt".

The guide is still in RFC-editors' queue. The RFC number will be
assigned along with "draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-reg-01.txt".

FAX WG understands that T.37 appendix will refer the Implementers Guide.
After the RFC number is assigned, our group will submit it to ITU-T.


3 Terminal Mode

There are several internet-drafts that relate to Terminal Mode.
But, unfortunately, there were no discussion for long months.
As a IETF general rule, with few support, it cannot be standarized.
Therefore, FAX WG dropped the discussion and removed it in our milestone.