Subject: Review of outbound-03: Major issues

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:45:41 +0200

Hi again.  These are my two main objections to this document right now.
I'm still on vacation, so I didn't see the last call notice before;
hopefully this note will still be useful even though the deadline has
passed.

* Don't separate licenses for text and code.  (section 6.3)

  Generally, this leads to legal complexity when two licenses has to be
  maintained.  There is legal difficulty in making it clear that
  different parts of a document is available under different licenses.
  This will undoubtedly lead to delays in the IETF process when people
  need to learn about this complexity, and negotiate how to solve it.

  By having a license (the non-code license) that is incompatible with
  both free and non-free software licenses, this will harm the adoption
  rate and interoperability of IETF standards.  If non-code portions
  cannot be used by implementers, those portions will have to be
  rewritten, and we all know that rewriting technical standards always
  leads to subtle error.

  The license on non-code portions of RFCs will make it impossible to
  distribute RFCs via popular free operating systsms, such as Debian or
  Ubuntu.  I believe this will ultimately harm the IETF.

  As far as I see, there is no good justification for this complication.
  The decision to go this route was made early on without understanding
  what the consequences would be, and an unwillingness to discuss or
  reconsider.

* Permit additional license notes
  and additional copyright notices (section 6.5)

  I believe the current text goes beyond RFC 2026, RFC 3978 and the
  running code of the IETF.  Several code examples have been included
  into IETF documents with special license notes.  RFC 2026 and RFC 3978
  permits additional license notes (but not additional copyright
  notices).

  A lot of source code that is useful to include in RFCs are available
  under liberal licenses, such as the BSD license.  That license
  requires that the license notices are preserved.  It is helpful for
  technical documents to include such source code.  I believe the
  outbound document should not stand in the way here.

  There also doesn't seem to be a good justification for the text.  What
  problem is it aiming to solve?

Thanks,
Simon

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---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:42:09 -0500

>   what the consequences would be, and an unwillingness to discuss or

I believe this is a request to reopen a previously closed issue (#1169).
I believe the group has discussed this issue for a long time, and I have 
seen no sign that consensus has moved.

If you wish to claim that I have not accurately reported the consensus of 
the WG, please appeal; if you believe that the consensus of the IETF is (or 
will be) different from the consensus of the WG, please raise the issue at 
IETF Last Call.

Otherwise, please stop beating this drum. We've all heard you.

>   problem is it aiming to solve?

Please identify exactly which section you mean. I do not know if this is a 
duplicate of #1282 or not.

                Harald

---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:43:05 +0200

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

> Please identify exactly which section you mean. I do not know if this
> is a duplicate of #1282 or not.

#1282 appear to be about multiple copyright notices, section 6.5 is
about multiple license statements.  That is not the same thing.  Section
6.5 currently reads:

6.5.  Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions

   There have been contexts where the material in an IETF contribution
   is also available under other license terms.  The IETF wishes to be
   able to include content which is available under such licenses.  It
   is desirable to indicate in the IETF contribution that other licenses
   are available.  It would be inappropriate and confusing if such
   additional licenses restricted the rights the IETF intends to grant
   in the content of RFCS.

   However, the IETF does not wish to have IETF Contributions contain
   additional copyright notices and licenses, as that introduces a
   number of additional difficulties.  Specifically, additional text in
   the document, and any additional license referred to by permitted
   additional text MUST NOT in any way restrict the rights the IETF
   intends to grant to others for using the contents of IETF
   contributions.

   Authors of contributions retain all rights in their contributions.
   As such, an author may directly grant any rights they wish separately
   from what the IETF grants.  However, a reader wishing to determine or
   make use of such grants will need to consult external sources of
   information, including possibly open source code and documents, or
   contact the author directly.

The first sentence of the second paragraph is incompatible with the
stated intention in the first paragraph, at least the way I read it.

Specifically, you cannot include content available under, e.g., the BSD
or GPL license, without conforming to the license requirements, and
those include retaining the copyright notice and the license statement.

Thus, if, e.g., BSD/GPL code should be acceptable in contributions,
which I believe is a useful thing that promotes the goal of the IETF,
and is also the running code (there are many RFCs with example code
under various licenses), the IETF must accept that this leads to having
additional license notices.

/Simon

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:51:55 +0200

Below...

> those include retaining the copyright notice and the license statement.

We know that. I thought the solution we reached was for the original
copyright holder to re-license (in parallel to the open source
license) by submitting the code as a direct contribution to the IETF.

     Brian

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:01:58 -0400

If it were just a matter of the copyright statement (an 
acknowledgement of another copyright, with rights grants compatible 
with the IETF rights grant, then there would be (nd is on the table) 
a reasonable question about allowing such.

However, the rough consensus is that we REQUIRE the right for 
everyone to use the code any way they want.  We acknowledged in the 
discussion that such was incompatible with GPL licenses.
Therefore, the code can not have a GPL license if it is to be 
included in an RFC.
That was what I was told to write, and what I believe is the right thing to do.

Pretending this is a new or different issue is misleading at 
best.  We have been over this ground.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:07:59 -0400

I agree with Joel's distinction.  Copyright notices fall into the
category of "credit where credit is due" and ought to be preserved.
Software licenses like GPL (and even LGPL) make the code unusable in
ways that matter to the Internet, and hence should be a last
resort, if allowed.

Thanks,
--David

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joel M. Halpern [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 6:02 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Review of outbound-03: Major issues
>

---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:28:12 +0200

> category of "credit where credit is due" and ought to be preserved.

That's not what outbound-03 says though: "However, the IETF does not
wish to have IETF Contributions contain additional copyright notices and
licenses".

> ways that matter to the Internet, and hence should be a last

Outbound-03 appear to disallow BSD licensed code too.  I believe that is
counter-productive.  It should be possible to include BSD-licensed code
in RFCs, as example code.

/Simon

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:53:24 -0400

The outbound document, as agreed, says that there is no other license 
text in I-Ds / RFCs.  the content is licensed according to IETF 
rules.  If BSD code requires a different license, then that is disallowed.
Yours,
Joel

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:09:55 -0700

The question ultimately becomes one of what the content is licensed for. 
That being whether that pertains to the use of the IP in the furtherance of 
the Standards Process, or in implementing a real-world implementation of 
that standard's initiative member.

Todd

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
To: "Simon Josefsson" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 3:53 PM
Subject: Re: Review of outbound-03: Major issues

> The outbound document, as agreed, says that there is no other license text 
> in I-Ds / RFCs.  the content is licensed according to IETF rules.  If BSD 
> code requires a different license, then that is disallowed.
> Yours,
> Joel
>

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 13:02:30 -0700

Harald - what if the consensus puts in place something that is not legally 
defensible? What I mean is what if the WG member's decided to do something 
that was illegal per se... how is oversight addressed???

This is an important question to ask of a bunch of engineer's (me included) 
who are drafting contract language itself.

Todd

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
To: "Simon Josefsson" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 1:42 PM
Subject: Re: Review of outbound-03: Major issues

> the WG, please appeal; if you believe that the consensus of the IETF is 
> (or will be) different from the consensus of the WG, please raise the 
> issue at IETF Last Call.
>