Dean Anderson lodged a complaint alleging violations of RFC3979 on September 8, 2005. The complaint was about the halt of discussion of non-patented alternatives for 3 DNSEXT drafts and about the lack of disclosure of applicable patents. The cited drafts contained extensively patented Eliptic Curve Crypto (ECC) systems, and the drafts did not have a patent disclosures. Anderson's complaint was suppressed in bad faith. Housley participated in bad faith with an undisclosed conflict of interest with his own authz-extns draft, which also did not have a patent disclosure. To carry out the improper acts, Housley also participated in the deception of the IAB on the result of the consensus call and Housley also participated in conduct contrary to the law.
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg37550.html
The complaint is very explanatory. Anderson is the President of the League for Programming Freedom, and as stated in the complaint, has tried to be a moderate in the discussion of IETF patent policy. However, Anderson cites clear violations of RFC3979. There were 3 issues being complained about by Anderson between roughly 2003 and 2005. This page is not to explain all the complaints, nor refute all the false charges, but Anderson has been vindicated on the veracity of each of his complaints, and the false charges against Anderson have also been refuted. Information continues to develop on all three complaint issues. Dishonesty and conflict of interest has been a common thread in underlying the subjects of all three complaints, though these facts were not known at the time of the initial complaints. The people are involved in all the complaints are closely associated (i.e. "cronies"), but this was also not known at the time of the initial complaints.
Several false charges were then fabricated against Dean Anderson, in order
to silence the RFC3979 policy complaint and 2 other complaints. The false charges
were composed into an RFC3683 PR-action. The PR-action can be found here:
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg38293.html
A PR-action requires a consensus call to the IETF list. Most people were against censoring Anderson, or against censoring anyone. The consensus call was re-issued deceptively after many persons supported Anderson. Anderson won the consensus call 15-2. People also question the fairness of the process.
Housley voted for the PR-action. This was subsequently discovered to be self-dealing and a conflict of interest. Housley acted in bad faith, since he was also violating RFC3979. He was on both sides of the transactions involving RFC3979: On one side he was the RFC3979 violator (undisclosed to the IESG), on the other side, he was deciding IESG response to RFC3979 violations.
Housley voted twice from Fall 2005 to March 2006: Once on the PR-action, and once on the Appeal of the PR-action: twice Housley voted to approve misrepresenting IETF IPR policy and to approve of refusals by WG chairs to comply with RFC3979 policy to disclose patents and discuss non-patented alternatives.
Housley suggests we take a look at his view of the Entrust Patent. If we take
that to mean that Housley doen't approve of the non-disclosure of patents, and
doesn't approve of non-compliance with RFC3979, then Housley would have acted
consistently with that view: Housley would voted against the PR-action, and
against rejecting the Appeal of the PR-action. I am not convinced Housley holds
such a view. There were two more opportunities to act consistently with such
a view: one would have refuted Steven Bellovin when he claimed that RFC3979
wasn't the IETF policy. Another opportunity was to require that the DNSEXT WG
obtain IPR disclosures and discuss non-patented alternatives in accordance with
RFC3979 when Anderson complained of this failure and refusal in September, 2005.
So Housley had at least 4 chances to act consistently with such a view, but
didn't do so by both actions and
inactions.
A community consensus call was issued. 15 favored Anderson or no PR-Action. 2 favored the PR-Action. Anderson won, but the IESG falsely reported the consensus to be against Anderson.
Anderson appealed to the IESG, which summarilly rejected the appeal.
Anderson appealed to the IAB. The IAB rejected the appeal. There are a large number of false statements made in the response, but those statements won't be addressed here. The main point here is that the IAB reports in the response that only 10 messages were received concerning the consensus. This false report originated from the IESG. The IESG was subsequently informed of this false report, but did nothing. Housley participated in that deception of the IAB, as an IESG member.
The PR-Action (written by Carpenter, Kessens, Crocker et al) states:
"4] Materials provided by Dave Crocker to support his request (IETF and
dnsext list):"Dean continues to discuss topic that was declared off-topic by
working group chair:"http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg37550.html"
There is a certain absurdity to the charge. Anderson is charged with sending a single message after the topic (recall the topic was patent disclosures and non-patented alternatives) was declared "off-topic". The single message was the properly formed complaint about the working group chair's decision about the topic. The IESG is complaining about getting a single, well-formed complaint from Anderson about RFC 3979 non-compliance. Of course, it was enventually discovered that the charge wasn't merely absurd, but a cover-up of other RFC3979 non-compliance.
The charge made by the PR-Action authors is false: Anderson was vindicated
that RFC3979 applies as Anderson asserted, and so the messages were therefore
not 'offtopic'. There were a total of 7 messages on the topic when the Chair
jumped in to halt the discussion. It was not the case that the discussion was
unproductive, or an interminable 'rat-hole'. Yet Housley approved both the PR-action
and voted to reject the Appeal. The effect was to deceive the IETF about
the patent status of these drafts, and to prevent discussion
of non-patented alternatives. Effectively silencing Anderson's complaints
and violating the patent policy stated in RFC 3979.
The record indicates that Housley had 4 opportunities between September, 2005
and March, 2006 to assert honest behavior regarding the IETF RFC3979 policy.
September 2005 and March 2006 is, coincidentally, is nearly the same time period
as we are concerned about regarding the TLS extensions draft. Presumably, a
draft submitted on in February, 2006 must have been under development (planning,
writing) in the Fall of 2005.
At the same time Housley was engaging in other deceptions about IPR policy he was also involved in violating IPR policy in almost exactly the same manner, and asserts that people should think they are unrelated.
It also turns out the PR-Action procedure is contrary to the law. The IETF is an activity of the ISOC. The ISOC is a non-profit corporation. The ISOC, and hence the IETF, is subject to the law governing corporations. Under the law, when no membership standard exists, membership is defined by participation. Anderson participated, and paid dues to the ISOC. The law of unincorporated associations is in agreement with the law of corporations on the matter of membership and suspensions/expulsions. Under the law, to suspend or expel a member of a non-profit corporation, besides being a just penalty, made in good faith (neither of which were true in this case), one of two conditions must hold:
The PR-action is not a bylaw, and no vote of the membership was held. So the suspension of Anderson and others was unlawful, contrary to the law. Housley participated in this unlawful conduct, and continued participation even after notice of the unlawful activity. Housley could also resign when faced with an untenable legal and ethical conflict, but instead decided to partipate despite the unlawful activities and self-dealing that Housley knew to be occuring..