Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-bradner-author-contributors-00.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2005 15:50:01 -0400

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.

	Title		: Obtaining Additional Permissions from Contributors
	Author(s)	: S. Bradner
	Filename	: draft-bradner-author-contributors-00.txt
	Pages		: 3
	Date		: 2005-7-5
	
   This is a proposed update to ^IETF Rights in Contributions^ (RFC 3978
   - BCP 78).  It proposes a change in the rights required from authors
   of contributors to the IETF.

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---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 08:45:26 +0200

>    of contributors to the IETF.

I'm in favour of this, and therefore also of draft-bradner-rfc-extracts-01.txt.
These comments apply to both.

1. I assume that this cannot be made retroactive, so I think the final text will
need a few words that make it clear that it does not purport to change the
permissions for all past RFCs.

We will also need words of warning here and on the RFC Editor site that
for RFCs prior to X date, permissions must be sought from the authors.

2. Do we have legal advice that we will not need to require formal signatures
from authors?

3. I think section 5.2 of RFC 3978 needs a slight change:

> 5.2.  Derivative Works Limitation
> 
>    If the Contributor desires to eliminate the IETF's right to make
>    modifications and derivative works of an IETF Contribution (other
>    than translations), one of the two of the following notices may be
>    included in the Status of Memo section of an Internet-Draft and
>    included in a published RFC

We are now not only talking about the IETF's right to make derivative
works, so I suggest deleting "IETF's" in the above paragraph.

4. From a practical viewpoint, we have no choice but to reissue BCP 78.
RFC 2026 doesn't allow for one BCP to consist of more than one RFC. That's
rather annoying, since BCP 79 contains explicit reference to RFC 3978. Any
ideas on how to avoid a reference conundrum would be welcome.

    Brian

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 09:38:09 +0200

Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> we have no choice but to reissue BCP 78.

Please fix the two typos - if they are typos - reported
in <http://mid.gmane.org/[email-masked]>.

<dreaming>  And support a Creative Commons BY + SA license
as a pointer with no more than two lines as its boilerplate
instead of the huge boilerplate.  </dreaming>  Bye, Frank

---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 10:32:32 +0200

> permissions for all past RFCs.

Copying conditions on RFCs have been changed retroactively before.  I
asked the RFC editor under what license RFC 1510 was published under,
and they replied saying it was RFC 2026.  If that change was done
properly, I don't see why a similar change cannot done be done again.

However, the current license disallow actions that I used to be
permitted to do, like incorporating part of RFC 1510 in my product.
I'd rather not see licenses be changed on existing documents.

Thanks,
Simon

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 15:15:49 +0200

> properly, I don't see why a similar change cannot done be done again.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be interested to hear what a copyright lawyer
thinks about this.

> permitted to do, like incorporating part of RFC 1510 in my product.

And it's exactly that sort of thing we need to fix.

> I'd rather not see licenses be changed on existing documents.

You mean not changed for the worse, presumably :-)

    Brian

---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 16:28:25 +0200

> I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be interested to hear what a copyright lawyer

So do I.  I have raised this concern, but nobody has responded.

Is nobody who was involved in re-licensing the old RFCs reading this
list?

See <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.ipr/2526> for things that
would be useful to address.

> And it's exactly that sort of thing we need to fix.

Thanks for confirming that view.  When I read the newly proposed
updates, they make me wonder whether the IETF is moving in the right
direction or not.

> You mean not changed for the worse, presumably :-)

Oops, right.  Perhaps I just anticipated that any change in this area
were going to be for the worse, based on the traffic here...

Of course, I believe the best would be if we could get a license that
permitted free use (including modifications) of all RFCs.

Regards,
Simon

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 03:00:16 -0400

--On Monday, 25 July, 2005 08:45 +0200 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...

If this were a protocol, the answer would be layering and
abstraction.   Put differently, the STD idea was correct in
permitting more than one RFC to be associated with a single STD.
When BCPs were instituted, they should, at least in retrospect,
have followed the same model, referring to a (possibly trivial)
set of documents, rather than a single one.     Of course, if
one also wants to associate annotations with the collection, not
just a list of relevant documents, one would need something
analogous with ISDs.

The idea that we need to revise our IPR context once a year or
more often, three years running, is really very troublesome.

And, as others have pointed out, identifying IETF procedural
documents as "BCPs" is, itself, misleading and confusing at best.

     john