Subject: Lawyers and text reuse

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 09:35:48 -0500

John Klensin writes:

> > - The "best" way to reuse that protocol was to copy large
> > amounts of text in order to reduce the likelihood of a subtle
> > change to the protocol courtesy of editorial "cleanup".
>
> Frankly, almost never.  The "best" way to reuse a protocol from
> another standards body --whether the IETF is the provider, the
> reuser, or unrelated-- is by reference.

When "reuse" means "reuse without change" I agree, but that wasn't
what was going on here (which may be the proverbial "exception that
proves the rule").  In this case, a significant adaptation was
involved due to fundamental technology differences.  The IETF protocol
involved was (not surprisingly) based on IP abstractions such as IP
addresses that do not exist as fundamental elements in the target
non-IP communication technology.  A cross reference to the IETF
protocol accompanied by an extensive list of things that have to
be changed would have resulted in an all-but-unimplementable mess.

> > Despite the good intentions of all involved, it was necessary
> > to throw in the towel at this juncture.  The situation had
> > become LP-Complete (Legal Process Complete) and there was no
> > confidence that the lawyers and organizations involved could
> > be managed to a predictable conclusion in a predictable period
> > of time.  Therefore, the editor for the security standard for
> > this other communication technology is rewriting significant
> > portions of IETF RFC text because that's easier to do than
> > managing the lawyers.  
>
> Ok.

I think this is a disagreement of philosophy that we will not be
able to resolve.  IMHO, the technical "right thing" to do was
text reuse, and the lawyers got in the way.  My strong preference
in dealing with this class of situation is to find a way to prevent
the lawyers from imposing obstacles.  If John's "Ok" means "just
live with it" then we disagree about fundamental goals.  I don't
expect such a disagreement to be resolvable, so if we do have
such a disagreement, I suggest that John and I agree to disagree,
and the WG will need to make a choice.

The important point to take away from this is that it is a
non-open-source, non-copyleft, etc. example in which the
inability of the IETF to permit text reuse got in the way.

Thanks,
--David
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David L. Black, Senior Technologist
EMC Corporation, 176 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
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[email-masked]        Mobile: +1 (978) 394-7754
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From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 15:52:04 +0100

> inability of the IETF to permit text reuse got in the way.

Agreed.  I think that point should be stressed more.  The rights that
the free software community need -- to be able to adapt parts of RFCs
into products -- are the same that closed source companies need too.

Having worked with some closed-source products, I know that excerpts
from RFCs pop up in many places.  RFC 2026 permit such usage, since
these excerpt aid in the implementation of the RFC, so previously
there were no problems.

I wonder if corporate lawyers reading RFC 3978 understand how their
engineers are using RFCs, and whether they understand the difference
in the traditional IETF copying conditions and the new license.

Thanks,
Simon