Subject: Re: I-D ACTION:draft-josefsson-ipr-rules-update-02.txt

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:26:57 +0100

Personal comments:

I'm still of the opinion that Simon's proposal inadvertently
amounts to the IETF giving up change control of our own documents,
and that seems plain wrong to me.

IMHO we've *got* to limit the field of use such that we get
to decide explicitly when it's OK for another body to
update one of our specifications. How to do that while
allowing the kind of uses we think are OK is really a
problem for a legal drafting expert, not for a bunch of
engineers. I suspect the license will end up being much
longer than what we have today, and will enumerate cases,
both those that are allowed and those not allowed, e.g.

o License is granted to copy, use, extract, modify and distribute
   the material when included in software code, provided only that
   the material may not subsequently be extracted from the software
   code for use other than in software code

o License is not granted to copy, use, extract, modify and distribute
   the material in any document which appears or purports to be an
   alternative version of a publicly available technical standard or
   technical specification of a same or similar name

etc etc.

     Brian

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From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:14:41 -0800

Brian - I have laid these out already - and unless you think those analysis
of the use requirements was wrong - then it seems that you are agreeing with
me (damn scary thought that too, eh?).

Todd

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From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 06:02:02 -0800

SNIP

> >    code for use other than in software code

Fine - let me ask a couple of questions that are intended to force the
issues of what grants or uses the license allows.

Q1  -  for text republishing, is there a requirement in the license to 'stay
current' - that is to say, is the license to use a perpetual one that has no
requirement to track whatever the currently or most recently published
document in some area is?

This requirement could have impact on derivative product or document rights,
but generally its pretty reasonable to tell anyone that they have to stay
current with the most recent revisions of anything, i.e. tracking the
authorized releases or any and all IETF publications etc. etc. etc.

The reasoning in posing this requirement as a concern here is that there is
no revision process tracking or numbering publicly so that versions of
documents can be referenced by name, number, and revision instead of just by
name and number as the current system provides. So how is CONTENT from some
specific RFC or other referrable document noted?

Q2 - what about derivative uses - are then forced to update and stay
current? The problem here comes into not wanting to upgrade or move past a
specific technology defined in RFC XXXX, a stucy in yada yada yada, version
1, and nothing past that. The focusing on a specific passage from  specific
document would be easier in a lincensing sense if there was a way, in
perpetuity, to differentiaite the code or text from oe version of a document
to the next.

> >    technical specification of a same or similar name

Uh - I dont think that  this is the threat that everyone thought it was
originally -My taks is that its the IETF's brand that makes what it
publishes worth something and so its the IETF's brand that needs a
protection policy and plan. The trademark and its republishing reghts or
licenses is something that gives the IETF's process much more power and
capability than one would think.

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From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:08:18 +0100

>   technical specification of a same or similar name

That language seem incompatible with the GPL and the BSD license to
me.

I recommend you and other WG members to read the BSD and GPL licenses.
It seems the license used for the many free software implementations
of IETF protocol that run the Internet is poorly understood here.

The GNU General Public License is available from:
        http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

The BSD license is available from (please correct me if you know of a
more canonical source, or more relevant BSD license):
    http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html

I believe compatibility with the BSD/GPL licenses is important for the
IETF document license, because spreading RFC material into free
software further the goals of the IETF.  So far, only my proposal is
compatible with BSD/GPL, as far as I can see.

If you have objections to other aspects of my license, please explain
exactly what you mean, and perhaps also how it could be fixed.  I
don't understand what you mean by "giving up change control".  The
IETF clearly has rights to change document, and it still control the
authoritative version.

Thanks,
Simon