Subject: Rationale for Proposed TLP Revisions

From: IETF Administrative Director <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:11:35 -0700 (PDT)

The IETF Trustees invited community comments on the proposed revisions to
the "Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents" (TLP) policy on 23 June
2009.  The proposed revisions are in rtf, pdf and doc formats and located
at: http://trustee.ietf.org/policyandprocedures.html under Draft Policies
and Procedures for IETF Documents.

On 18 July, in a reply to Subject:  Proposed Revisions to the IETF Trust
Legal Provisions (TLP), the IETF Trust Chair said: The rationale for the
remaining summary of proposed changes will be sent in a separate email.

This is a summary of the proposed revisions to the TLP by section with
explanations, 
where needed:

2.f -- this new language describes the conditions under which the IETF  
Trust will assume licensing and copyright responsibility for IAB, IRTF  
and Independent Stream submissions, should the managers of those  
streams request that it do so.

Explanation:  The IETF Trust was approached by representatives of the
IAB, IRTF and RFC Editor, who asked the Trust to assume the role of
"license administrator" for their respective document streams.  The
Trust is happy to do so as part of its role supporting the IETF.  The
language included in new Section 2.f of the TLP describes the procedure
by which the Trust proposes to handle documents from these non-IETF
streams.

4.c -- clarifies that the BSD License may not be applied to Code  
Components that come from IETF Documents as to which the Contributor  
has prohibited the making of derivative works.

Explanation:  An IETF participant noticed that, under the existing TLP,
the broad BSD
adoption language might "trump" a contributor's prohibition on the right
to make derivative works of his/her contribution.  The new language
clarifies that the BSD license will not apply if the contributor has
specified that no derivative works may be made of his/her contribution.

4.e -- this new section clarifies the legend requirements for Code  
Components that are used in software under the BSD License. 
In short, the user must include the full BSD License text or a shorter
pointer  to it (which is set forth in Section 6.d)

Explanation:  The issue of the appropriate BSD License language to
include in Code
Components extracted from IETF documents has been discussed extensively
within the IESG.  The proposed TLP language is intended to be consistent
with the IESG's latest guidance language, and allows the user of IETF
Code to include either the full BSD license language (about 15 lines of
text), or a short "pointer" to the BSD language (about 4 lines). 

6 -- the language regarding placement of legends on IETF Documents has  
been clarified.  Placement on the "first page" is no longer required,  
and authority for placement of the legends is  with the RFC Editor and  
IESG.

Explanation:  Self-explanatory

6.a - the words "to IETF" have been removed, to enable submission to  
IAB, IRFT and other streams.

Explanation:  Self-explanatory

6.b -- a new sentence has been added to the legend that must be placed  
on all IETF Documents, pointing out the BSD License requirements  
described in 4.e above and emphasizing that code in IETF Documents  
comes without any warranty, as described in the BSD License.

Explanation:  See 4.e above

6.d -- the BSD legend/pointer described in 4.e above

Explanation:  See 4.e above

Comments on the proposed revisions to the TLP are welcomed.

Ray
Trustee