Subject: #1511: Incoming 5.10: Back-license to document authors in resulting RFCs

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:20:01 +0200

Since the previous attempt at discussion didn't bring what I consider
enough feedback to claim that I know what the group consensus is, I've
asked Scott Bradner to publish the draft "as-is".

The result of that posting is draft-ietf-ipr-3978-incoming-02.txt.

I believe that all other changes agreed to in Chicago have been
incorporated, but I'm still not happy with the amount of resolution of
section 5.10.

Please - if you have comments on the issue described below, relevant to
section 5.10, please include "#1511" in the subject line somewhere.

If you have issues with the rest of the document, pleas start a new thread
that starts with the string "ISSUE".

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Greetings,
in the process of preparing the next version of -incoming, incorporating
the list-confirmed decisions of the Chicago WG meeting, a couple of
issues have been brought to light.

One concerns the granting of a license to the author to use the text
submitted for an RFC in other work - referred to in Chicago discussions
by the label of "SPARC addendum".

Two approaches have been suggested:

1) Insert a "read-only" license into -incoming, granting essentially the
same rights as is granted to any other reader, but linking them to the
submission agreement rather than to an IETF Trust grant decision:

> 5.10. Contributors retention of rights
> .br
> Notwithstanding any terms in this document to the contrary, in addition
> to any rights under copyright retained by Contributor and in addition to
> any rights generally granted by the TETF trust, Contributor retains, and
> grants to each Co-Contributor to an RFC in which such Contributor's
> Contribution, or a derivative work thereof may appear, the right:  .in +3
> .ti -3
> (A) to copy, publish, display, and distribute any RFC that includes the
> Contribution, in whole or in part, .ti -3
> (B) to prepare translations of such RFC into languages other than
> English, in whole or in part, and to copy, publish, display, and
> distribute such translations or portions thereof, and .ti -3
> (C) to reproduce any trademarks, service marks or trade names which are
> included in the RFC solely in connection with the reproduction,
> distribution or publication of the RFC thereof as permitted by this
> Section 5.10, provided that when reproducing RFCs, trademark and service
> mark identifiers used in the RFC, including TM and (R), will be preserved.
> .in -3
>
> Notwithstanding the above rights, the Contributor does not have the right
> to represent any document as an RFC, or equivalent to an RFC, if it is
> not a full and complete copy or translation of the published RFC.

2) Granting a special license to produce derivative works from the text
of the finished RFC, subject only to the limitation that the result
can't be presented as if it was an RFC.

The argument has been presented (in private) that the following
principles were "always implied" wrt RFCs:

	(1) The author(s) or editor(s) of an RFC were the
	authors/ editors.  The RFC Editor wasn't the author, an
	editor, or the owner of the document.  The RFC Editor
	acted as the agent of the author in adding any
	boilerplate and licenses, whether it was the early "...
	distribution unlimited..." or the current pages of ISOC/
	IETF Trust boilerplate.
	
	(2) If there was more than one author, they were the
	compilers of the document as a group and their joint
	efforts produced the document from their work and any
	other work that they incorporated and took
	responsibility for having the rights to use.
	
	(3) The author(s) granted the community the right to
	reproduce and use, but retained, as a group if there was
	more than one, "all rights" from a legal sense.

This, if taken as "the whole truth", does not seem consistent with the
model that's been in -incoming for a while, where the IETF Trust has
some rights in the RFC series, at least to the point of requiring that
derived works not be presented
as RFCs in the RFC series.

Input is sought on this issue.

The other issue, raised by Jorge Contreras, concerns the split of the
work of this WG into two documents (-incoming and -outgoing); if we
start having language in the -incoming document granting some outgoing
rights, the separation becomes rather blurred from his perspective.

The opposite viewpoint is that the two documents have distinct audiences
and distinct status in the IETF process, and that it therefore makes no
sense to merge them; such a merge would also be inconsistent with the
charter of the WG.

Input is sought on this issue too.

         Harald Alvestrand, WG chair

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---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:39:10 +1300

To repeat myself...

> can't be presented as if it was an RFC.

I prefer this, with the Trust being enjoined to maintain
the principle that the RFC Editor is an agent of the authors
and of the community.

To go further, let me suggest draft text for section 5.10:

Although contributors provide specific rights to the IETF, it
is not intended that this should deprive them of any rights
in their contributions. To underwrite this principle, the
IETF Trust is requested to issue a form of license to contributors
which ensures that they may each make use of their contributed
material as published in an RFC in any way they wish, subject only
to the restriction that no contributor has the right to represent
any document as an RFC, or equivalent to an RFC, if it is not a
full and complete copy or translation of the published RFC. The
IETF Trust is further requested to ensure that in all matters
pertaining to contributors' rights, the RFC Editor acts only as
an agent of the contributors and of the IETF.

    Brian

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 13:46:40 -0400

Brian,

> I prefer this, 

I agree - it's simpler to grant back a license in the resulting RFC, and
that causes the right thing to happen when the publication of the RFC
relies on the IETF's rights to produce derivative works from its own
RFCs (e.g., to publish the successor to RFC XXXX, the IETF Trust's
copyright in RFC XXXX is required).  Under this approach, a co-author
to RFC XXXX gets a clear license to use its contents that is easy to
explain to an institution.  In contrast, approach 1:

> Contributor retains, and
> Contribution, or a derivative work thereof may appear, 

results in a set of cross-licenses involving all the co-authors and
the IETF Trust, the union of which supplies the intended rights - this
is much harder to explain, and hence carries higher risk of an
institution
rejecting it as insufficient.

> with the Trust being enjoined to maintain

The resulting language should also explicitly state what the Trust is
not supposed to do - anything important that is being implied here
ought to be explicitly stated ... because it won't be obvious to all
other readers of the document.

One possibility might that after the following:

  The IETF Trust is further requested to ensure that in all matters
  pertaining to contributors' rights, the RFC Editor acts only as
  an agent of the contributors and of the IETF.

add this text:

  ; the IETF Trust is requested to ensure that it does not act
  as an owner of RFCs and their content independent of the
  contributors and the IETF.

Thanks,
--David
----------------------------------------------------
David L. Black, Distinguished Engineer
EMC Corporation, 176 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
+1 (508) 293-7953             FAX: +1 (508) 293-7786
[email-masked]        Mobile: +1 (978) 394-7754
----------------------------------------------------

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian E Carpenter [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007 6:39 PM
> To: Harald Tveit Alvestrand
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: #1511: Incoming 5.10: Back-license to document 
> authors in resulting RFCs
> 
> To repeat myself...
>

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 09:19:51 +1300

David,

>   contributors and the IETF.

I agree with the sentiment. To my mind it's implicit in
the very existence of the Trust; the Trust Agreement says
"The Beneficiary of the Trust shall be the IETF as a whole
and not any individuals who may participate in IETF activities
or either of the Settlors." We could certainly write it down
here.

     Brian

---

From: "TS Glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 11:10:13 -0700

Those Rights MUST be granted to the IP's owners and NOT to the submitters 
and the language in the conveyance needs to be specific to that then

Todd Glassey
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 10:46 AM
Subject: RE: #1511: Incoming 5.10: Back-license to document authors 
inresulting RFCs

Brian,

add this text:

Thanks,
--David

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:52:29 -0400

> and the language in the conveyance needs to be specific to that then

Believe it or not, Todd has a point here.  The rights granted by the
back-license need to be subject to work-for-hire if the author's
original
contributed text was subject to work-for-hire.  Language requesting that
the IETF Trust grant the back-license to (and only to) copyright owners
on whose behalf the original text was contributed will probably do the
job.  

Ironically, this is not a concern for the academic institutions that got
us into this topic, but it is a concern for non-academic entities such
as corporations.

Thanks,
--David

---

From: "TS Glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:29:27 -0700

As long as we are talking about derivative rights and all that - lets define 
what it is exactly we are defining as "that IP constrained by this rule". 
Does it mean the IETG's WG Mailing List content for that period, or does it 
mean the Standard Document itself? and how about the I-D's and RFC's that 
came in the interim?

The idea that we are arguing over the scope of the rights is somewhat 
premature to defining what it is those rights are to, since that in and of 
itself requires a number of specific releases and agreement's in this and 
other cultures.

Todd
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "TS Glassey" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: #1511: Incoming 5.10: Back-license to document 
authorsinresulting RFCs

---

From: "TS Glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:30:52 -0700

As long as someone is listening I also want to bring this idea up again and 
that is in discussing adding a Hold Harmless statement in the WG Operations 
Rules and one in the Submission Process as well. I think that this is really 
getting to be important to protect those sponsors from the actions of both 
their own sponsoree's and the actions of others in the IETF's WG's.

Todd

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "TS Glassey" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: #1511: Incoming 5.10: Back-license to document 
authorsinresulting RFCs