Re: iSCSI: PAK: an alternative to SRP and DH-CHAP

[Philip MacKenzie <philmac@research.bell-labs.com>]

> 
> The problem is that "reasonable and non-discriminatory" isn't good enough.
> While it's fine for commercial vendors, it won't work for the open source
> community. iSCSI with SRP won't be able to get into the NetBSD kernel for
> instance. I doubt it will get into the FreeBSD, OpenBSD or Linux kernels
> either.
> 


> I don't see how iSCSI with PAK will fare any different. Yes, PAK so far
> seems better in that it's more of a one-stop licensor (so far), but it's
> still heavy-enough IPR to cause problems. In fact, it's a bit worse in
> that here the patent holder wants licensing fees, whereas Stanford, for
> SRP, doesn't. :-|

> 
> Thoughts?
> 


I will bring up the issue of non-commercial vendors
with our licensing folks, and see what can be done.

As to SRP, I think the problem was that there were 3 patents
that were thought may apply -  from Lucent, Phoenix, and Stanford.
At least 2 of those places would probably want licensing fees.

-Phil