Subject: FreeBSD has to change its manual because of IETF IPR rules

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 11:32:36 +0100

Just to illustrate that the problem is not only with Debian. FreeBSD
was apparently unable to keep texts from the RFC in its manual pages
(6.0 has been released yesterday) because of restrictive IETF policy:

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.0R/relnotes-i386.html

The following manual pages, which were derived from RFCs and possibly
violate the IETF's copyrights, have been replaced: gai_strerror(3),
getaddrinfo(3), getnameinfo(3), inet6_opt_init(3),
inet6_option_space(3), inet6_rth_space(3), inet6_rthdr_space(3),
icmp6(4), and ip6(4).

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:40:02 +0100

Did they think of *talking* to the IETF before these changes? It looks
as if they have completely misinterpreted both the intent and the actual
legal meaning of the IETF language.

     Brian

---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 18:44:24 +0100

The legal meaning of RFC 3978 seem clear to me.  There are no rights
granted to third parties whatsoever.  This issue has been pointed out
on this list for well over a year, so people have certainly been
talking to the IETF about this.  I don't think it is reasonable to
expect people to contact an organization to check whether they mean
what they say.  I'm here in Vancouver to describe similar problems
that I encountered, so I hope the intended direction of the IETF will
be easier to deduct soon.

Regards,
Simon

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From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:49:24 -0500

>>>>> "Brian" == Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> writes:

    Brian> Did they think of *talking* to the IETF before these
    Brian> changes? It looks as if they have completely misinterpreted
    Brian> both the intent and the actual legal meaning of the IETF
    Brian> language.

I don't think the IETF has the rights to help them.  I don't think we
can give FreeBSD the right to reformat these man pages.

---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 01:55:26 +0100

I spoke to the people who made this change in FreeBSD.  The man pages
were actually rewritten by the OpenBSD project because they (IMO,
correctly) consider the RFC 3978 license to be incompatible with the
BSD license.  I'll have more details at the meeting tonight...

Thanks,
Simon

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From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:31:55 +0100

On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 05:40:02PM +0100,
 Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 19 lines which said:

> Did they think of *talking* to the IETF before these changes? 

You must be kidding. When you manage something as complicated as an
operating system, you have other things to do than to engage in
lengthy legal discussions (not to mention checking everything with an
attorney) with people when you have already read their legal
texts. Legal conditions for redistribution and modification should be
clear enough so that no callback to the IETF is necessary (I find the
current discussion often confusing and I would pity the FreeBSD
people if they tried to follow it).

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:59:12 +0100

Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> texts.

As you may realise, companies managing something as complicated
as a proprietary o/s do exactly this because they have to, in order
to stay out of court or to succeed when litigation occurs. I can see
that this is much harder for an open source project, but I really
find it hard to believe that FreeBSD has no lawyers.

> Legal conditions for redistribution and modification should be

Legal language is rarely that clear and IPR law is complex and subtle.
I'm sorry, but there are few short-cuts in this area.

    Brian

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From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 01:20:19 +0100

> find it hard to believe that FreeBSD has no lawyers.

Many vendors derive their getaddrinfo man page from the RFC.  I
compared getaddrinfo(3) on my Solaris 5.9 machine with RFC 2133, and
it re-uses a considerably amount of text.  The man page also modify
the text in several places.

I think there is agreement that the vendors have no legal rights to do
this.  At least nobody has been able to disprove this so far in this
discussion.

The FreeBSD people noticed this legal issue, read RFC 3667 and then
contacted IETF to determine if their interpretation was correct, and
it was suggested that it was.  With permission, I'm including portions
of the e-mail exchange that occurred on the IESG or IAB list last year
below.

I believe the e-mail below prove that people DID contact the IETF
about the problem with the copying conditions on the getaddrinfo man
page.

I think your view of the situation (as quoted above), given the facts,
is rather twisted.  FreeBSD did the license analysis correctly, and
other vendors, including big companies, dodged the issue.

Thanks,
Simon

> Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 14:56:43 -0500
> From: Rob Austein <[email-masked]>
>
> At Mon, 27 Dec 2004 19:16:58 +0900 (JST), Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino wrote:
> > 
> > 	quick question.
> > 
> > 	it seems that many vendors reuse RFC text as manpages (such as KAME
> > 	(fixing), Sun Solaris).  is it permitted?  i see no text that
> > 	permitting reuse in ISOC copyright boilerplate, so (taking "default
> > 	is not allowed" logic) i think it is not permitted.
> 
> i think you are correct, it is not permitted.
> 
> see rfc 3667 for details, but the short version is
> 
> a) man pages would be a derivative work;
> 
> b) in general (see caveats in 3667) the ietf and isoc get a
>    perpetual irrevocable worldwide non-exclusive right to create
>    deriviative works; but
> 
> c) nowhere do the ietf rules say or imply that the ietf/isoc rights
>    (b) are transferable to or apply to any other party.
> 
> so ietf/isoc is allowed to create derivative works, but anybody else
> being allowed to do so is a separate matter beyond the scope of the
> ietf rules.  since the ietf/isoc rights (b) are non-exclusive, the
> original authors can grant similar rights to other parties should they
> choose to do so, but the ietf doesn't require them to do it.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 14:20:50 +0100

Rob Austein's reply is possibly correct, but he isn't any more
a lawyer than I am, and we are of course engaged here in trying
to find a fix for this issue (whether it's your proposed fix
or another one).

    Brian