Harry,
Concerning status with Adobe, please see attached "2. Status of Draft
Standard consideration", which was taken from the IFax working group minutes
from the Salt Lake City meeting in Decmber and the info below.
The following is a translation of the initials referenced in the attached
minutes segment:
CA = Claudio Allocchio (IFax WG co-chair)
JK = John Klensin (IAB chair)
NF = Ned Freed (Application Area director)
SF = Scott Foshee (Adobe's representative)
IETF gives direction - full speed ahead in moving TIFF-FX to Draft Standard
for Sept. 02. During the IFax Working Group (WG) session of the Dec. 2001
IETF meeting the Chair of the IAB (Internet Architecture Board - IETF's
oversight body)directed the WG to proceed in advancing TIFF-FX to Draft
Standard without regard for Adobe's license claims. The IFax WG responded by
establishing Sept. 2002 as the target for TIFF-FX to be approved as Draft
Standard. The TIFF-FX specification will require use of two MIME
content-types, the current image/tiff for basic black-and-white encodings
and a new image/tiff-fx content-type for other image encodings (e.g. color
and high quality black-and-white), when transported by MIME.
In December, Xerox offered their MRC technology for use in TIFF royalty-free
as long as such usage is consistent with the way MRC is currently used in
TIFF-FX. In addition, any company implementing Profile M / MRC in a
marketplace product can request a royalty-free license from Xerox. A
separate license from Adobe is NOT needed as long as UIF is treated as
TIFF-FX, and the enhanced conformance requirements that UIF brings to the
table are described as "TIFF-FX extensions". If UIF is described in this
manner, then it will fall under the license grant that Adobe has already
given to the IETF.
Instead, of raising IP issues now, Adobe (represented by Larry Masinter) is
claiming that the IETFs proposed solution of using the "image/tiff-fx" MIME
type & *.tfx file extension for identifying TIFF-FX profiles that are not
compatible with TIFF 6.0 is enough of a change to warrant the TIFF-FX spec
to be recycled back to "Proposed Standard" status (currently it is at "last
call" for "Draft Standard"). During the December IETF meeting, members have
rebutted by saying that changing the MIME type & file extension of TIFF-FX
profiles has nothing to do with the TIFF-FX data format itself. The Area
Director indicated that there is merit to NOT require recycling to Proposed
Standard. He has taken an action item to seek IESG ruling as to whether it
is necessary to recycle to Proposed Standard.
The IESG should come to a decision about recycling TIFF-FX to Proposed
Standard versus retaining it in the Draft Standard pending mode by the end
of January 2002.
If they rule in favor of retaining Draft Standard pending mode, then the
schedule for the 3 TIFF-FX related documents will be as follows:
draft-ietf-fax-tiff-regbis-03.txt (image/tiff MIME registration document -
follows Best Common Practice or "BCP" track)
Currently "Best Common Practice" last call
March 2002 - "Best Common Practice" status
draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-reg-01.txt (image/tiff-fx MIME registration
document - follows formalized standards progression track)
Currently - Internet draft
March 2002 - Proposed Standard status (must stay at this level for at
least 6 months)
September 2002 - Draft Standard status
draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-11.txt (a.k.a., "the TIFF-FX spec", "RFC2301" -
follows formalized standards progression track)
Currently - Pending Draft Standard
September 2002 - Draft Standard status
Note that the September 2002 Draft Standard milestone is valid even if the
IESG rules that TIFF-FX should be recycled as Proposed Standard. The WG and
the Area Director have committed to Draft Standard approval by Sept. 2002,
independent of whether recycling to Proposed Standard is necessary. This is
the case because a TIFF-FX Proposed Standard last call and approval
milestones would be the same or very similar to that of image/tiff-fx (i.e.
WG Last Call end January, IESG Last Call February, approved Proposed
Standard March, and Draft Standard September 2002).
With this said, I would recommend to the IPPFax group that UIF in its
current form (i.e., as TIFF-FX referencing TIFF-FX extensions) be adopted as
the data format for IPPFax. Considering another data format would only delay
IPPFax's schedule.
Regards,
John P.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ifx@pwg.org [mailto:owner-ifx@pwg.org]On Behalf Of Harry
Lewis
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 2:08 PM
To: ifx@pwg.org
Subject: IFX> TIFF-FX viability
Can anyone provide an update on the status of the Adobe license issue
w.r.t.TIFF-FX in the IETF? I know there was some desire for me to pursue a
license agreement for the PWG but it makes little sense, to me, for the
PWG to request a license which is identical to that which has been
rejected for the IETF. If someone can provide some good reasoning and
there is consensus, I will do this in preparation for the Feb meeting in
L.A.
What about considering alternative image formats? At the last f2f there
was some degree of revelation that it may not be necessary to seek one
standard that covers all the IFX needs. For example, the combination of
the JPEG2000/JBIG2/MRC algorithms as described in JPEG20000 Part 6 may
maximize compression efficiency AND provide a monochrome solution which is
an efficient subset of the color solution.
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Harry Lewis
IBM Printing Systems
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