Subject: License File for Open Source Repositories

From: IESG Secretary <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2016 07:36:53 -0800

The IESG has observed that many working groups work with open source
repositories even for their work on specifications. That's great, and
we're happy to see this development, as it fits well the working style
of at least some of our working groups. This style is also likely to be
more popular in the future.

As always, we'd like to understand areas where we can either be helpful
in bringing in some new things such as tooling, or where we need to
integrate better between the repository world and the IETF process. As
an example of the latter, we're wondering whether it would be helpful to
have a standard boilerplate for these repositories with respect to the
usual copyright and other matters. The intent is for such text to be
placed in a suitable file (e.g., "CONTRIBUTING"), probably along with
some additional information that is already present in these files in
many repositories. The idea is that people should treat, e.g., text
contributions to a draft-foo.xml in a repository much in the same way as
they treat text contributions on the list, at least when it comes to
copyright, IPR, and other similar issues.

We have worked together with the IETF legal team and few key experts
from the IETF who are actively using these repositories, and suggest the
following text.

We're looking to make a decision on this matter on our January 19th,
2017 IESG Telechat, and would appreciate feedback before then. This
message will be resent after the holiday period is over to make sure it
is noticed. Please send comments to the IESG ([email-masked]) by 2017-01-17.

The IESG

——

This repository relates to activities in the Internet Engineering Task
Force(IETF). All material in this repository is considered Contributions
to the IETF Standards Process, as defined in the intellectual property
policies of IETF currently designated as BCP 78
(https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/bcp78), BCP 79
(https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/bcp79) and the IETF Trust Legal
Provisions (TLP) Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/trust-legal-provisions.html).

Any edit, commit, pull-request, comment or other change made to this
repository constitutes Contributions to the IETF Standards Process. You
agree to comply with all applicable IETF policies and procedures,
including, BCP 78, 79, the TLP, and the TLP rules regarding code
components (e.g. being subject to a Simplified BSD License) in
Contributions.

---

From: Dave Taht <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2016 12:12:30 -0800

"open source != BSD". There are better licenses out there - notably
apache 2.0 is pretty clear, legally, in places where BSD is not. I am
also under the impression that GPLv2 has an implicit patent grant
(which would be a real boon in clearing some matters up long before it
would ever become an issue).

But IANAL. Have you taken this proposed policy up with OSI?

https://opensource.org/

-- 
Dave Täht
Let's go make home routers and wifi faster! With better software!
http://blog.cerowrt.org

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2016 10:56:26 +0200

Dave,

Seasons greetings! :-)

> apache 2.0 is pretty clear, legally, in places where BSD is not.

You may be correct, but this license file was not intended to change what IETF policies around code in RFCs and I-Ds are. It was only intended to be usable as a note in a repository used for spec work; the note just says that the IETF rules apply. And those rules say we apply BSD license for the code components in our documents, see Section 4 in https://trustee.ietf.org/documents/IETF-TLP-5_001.html.

Jari

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2016 14:52:47 -0800

> But IANAL. Have you taken this proposed policy up with OSI?
The statement addresses the use of and obligations of contributors to
repositories. It does not, nor does it intend to change the licensing
terms of contributions, present in bcp 78,79 and the TLP.

---

From: Dave Taht <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2016 17:58:26 -0800

> terms of contributions, present in bcp 78,79 and the TLP.

The non-answer seems to be that OSI has not been consulted.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2016 15:52:12 +1300

Dave,
On 25/12/2016 14:58, Dave Taht wrote:

...
> The non-answer seems to be that OSI has not been consulted.

The choice of licence for IETF contributions, including the code
content of contributions, did involve quite a bit of consultation.
No doubt there is some memory of that in the relevant list archives,
which led to the OSI approving the non-profit-osl-3 and then to the
sad observation that it wasn't, in the end, suitable[*], so simplified BSD
was the final choice by the Trust.

[*] e.g. https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/IRAHshoaNxUBou2pvOUOElshrj8

Happy holidays,

    Brian