Subject: RE: draft-josefsson-ipr-rules-update-00

From: "Powers Chuck-RXCP20" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 11:47:20 -0500

IMO, this sort of obligation should not be required of participants in
the development of a standard in the IETF. If an individual contributor
wants to make her/his I-D (or contributions to an I-D) available on this
sort of "copyleft-like" basis, s/he is free to do so. However, I don't
think that someone who wants to contribute to the development of a
standard in the IETF should somehow also be required to allow anyone in
the world to use their contribution(s) as a basis for saying/doing what
they want with the contributed text.

I haven't seen a valid argument made yet that supports the notion that
the ability to take normative text from an RFC and publish modifications
as one sees fit is _required_ in order to implement software or hardware
compliant with that RFC. Ensuring that MIB information or source code
included in an RFC is available to be included/modified in an
implementation of that standard makes sense, since it can be necessary
by its nature. But the ability to modify the normative text simply isn't
a necessity to implement the standard. If you want to provide
documentation, reference the RFC, and then note in separate text where
your code deviates in functionality from the standard. You don't need to
be able to modify the text in the RFC to do this, and I would expect
that any specific reference to the normative text in such a document
would fall under "fair use", anyway.

I want to make sure that we don't undermine the standards development
process by _forcing_ contributors to that process into making their text
available for uses which they never intended, or approved. This will
only serve to close the process to those who want to contribute to the
standard without seeing their efforts respun by others outside of the
standards process.

regards,

Chuck Powers

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
Of Simon Josefsson
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2005 3:14 AM
To: Bill Sommerfeld
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: draft-josefsson-ipr-rules-update-00

Bill Sommerfeld <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Thu, 2005-10-13 at 19:29, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> After I submitted that document, Branden Robinson of the Debian 
>> project (which are supporters of my effort) proposed to change the 
>> license text slightly, into:
>> 
>>    The Contributor grants third parties the right to copy and
>>    distribute the Contribution, with or without modification, in any
>>    medium, without royalty, provided that the copyright notice and
>>    this notice are preserved, and that any claims of endorsement or
>>    official status by the IETF or ISOC are removed.
>
> that text effectively removes the right to distribute unmodified 
> copies.
>
> we definitely don't want that.

Thanks for catching that, it was unintentional.

Florian Weimer pointed out that the above license is a copyleft license,
e.g., that modified version must retain the same copying conditions.  I
don't believe we want that either, because incorporating parts of RFCs
into closed source should be permitted too.

I have updated the license to address those two concerns, the new
license reads:

        The Contributor grants third parties the right to
	copy and distribute the Contribution, with or without
	modification, in any medium, without royalty.  If the
	Contribution is modified, any claims of endorsement or
	official status by the IETF or ISOC must be removed.

I'm interested in hearing more feedback from this WG.

Thanks,
Simon

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---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 09:33:52 +0200

"Powers Chuck-RXCP20" <[email-masked]> writes:

> sort of "copyleft-like" basis, s/he is free to do so.

The license isn't a copyleft license or copyleft-like license.  For an
explanation of what copyleft is, you may want to read:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#WhatIsCopyleft

The original license may have been interpreted as a copyleft-license,
but that was unintentional.

Note that my effort is not strictly for open/free software.  The
rights I claim we need are equally necessary by closed source and
proprietary products.  (See below.)

> However, I don't think that someone who wants to contribute to the
> development of a standard in the IETF should somehow also be
> required to allow anyone in the world to use their contribution(s)
> as a basis for saying/doing what they want with the contributed
> text.

What usage is it that you think will be permitted that you want to
forbid?

Claiming that the modified document is the real IETF/ISOC product, to
create confusion, is the only argument I've seen presented here, and
we could (and have) addressed that concern in my proposed license
statement.  I also believe using trademark laws to protect from that
fear is more likely to be successful.

> compliant with that RFC.

I don't think there is a valid argument for that either.  What you are
describing isn't what I'm trying to achieve.

What I'm claiming is that it furthers the IETF's goal to make it
possible for implementors to incorporate parts of Contributions in
online help, manuals, and source code.

If you read source code for IETF protocol implementations, you often
encounter quotations from the RFC.  This is equally true for open
source products and closed source products.  Permitting that
long-standing usage by making the necessary changes to BCP78 seem like
a good thing to me.

> Ensuring that MIB information or source code included in an RFC is
> available to be included/modified in an implementation of that
> standard makes sense, since it can be necessary by its nature.

That usage is not permitted by BCP78 today, from what I can tell.  It
may have been the intention to permit that, but somewhere along the
way, the intention got lost.

> But the ability to modify the normative text simply isn't a
> necessity to implement the standard. If you want to provide
> documentation, reference the RFC, and then note in separate text
> where your code deviates in functionality from the standard. You
> don't need to be able to modify the text in the RFC to do this, and
> I would expect that any specific reference to the normative text in
> such a document would fall under "fair use", anyway.

While some groups may want a right similar to what you are describing
here, this isn't my main priority.

Again, I want to incorporate parts of Contributions into my products.
Do you think that usage should be forbidden?  Why?

> standard without seeing their efforts respun by others outside of the

If someone doesn't want their standard to be as widely used or
implemented as possible, perhaps they shouldn't publish it through the
IETF.  There is plenty of company associations that publish
specifications intended to be used by members only, with restrictive
licenses.

Thanks,
Simon

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 11:51:44 -0400

Aside from Debian philosophical objections, if we give you the right to 
include excerpts without modification, and with citation, why is that not 
sufficient?  You keep asking for the right to modify the text, and then 
explaining that you need to incorporate the text.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 09:31:16 -0700

Q: -
What is the difference between saying "I allow freely republished" or other
derivative works to be made from my submissions, and my assigning those
rights to the public domain directly? - why does the IETF require any
formalizations of their owning and controlling the IP?

Todd

---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 13:19:14 +0200

"Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]> writes:

> Aside from Debian philosophical objections,

I wouldn't agree to ignore Debian's philosophical objections, if that
was what you were implying.  Debian distribute several of my products,
and some of my customers became acquianted with my products through
Debian.

> if we give you the right to include excerpts without modification,
> and with citation, why is that not sufficient?  You keep asking for
> the right to modify the text, and then explaining that you need to
> incorporate the text.

Sorry for not making this clear.  The reason are so obvious to me that
it affect my ability to explain the issue to others.

The reason is that my source code and manuals are released under a
free license, which permit further modifications.  My customers are
paying for the right to make modifications, either themselves or
through other consultants in the future.  That is how free software is
developed.

I believe it would be unreasonable to require that portions of RFCs
that I quote in source code comments, or incorporate a table of
Unicode code points, cannot be modified because doing so would
diminish the official status of the RFC, or what the argument was.
Those two events are not correlated.

Sorry if I'm not clear, the reason is that I simply doesn't understand
the objections to my claims.  I see no danger in permitting the usage
I request.  Perhaps you could explain what dangers you see in making
it possible for me to incorporate -- and later also potentially modify
-- portions of RFCs into source code and manuals.  I thought
permitting that usage was the intended usage of RFCs, at least
historically.

Thanks,
Simon