Subject: Obnoxious license

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:04:39 -0700

Hello,

I was discussing RFC 5617 with someone and the person mentioned that 
the copyright in the middle of the document is obnoxious.  The 
copyright statement for the code is 32 lines while the code (ABNF) is 
only five lines.

If an author wants to include the statement in a RFC for the sake of 
completeness, is it possible to have the statement in a paragraph 
near the end of the document and put in a note before the ABNF to refer to it?

Regards,
-sm

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:12:06 -0700

That's essentially why we are trying to enable folks to put a  
reference in. The license needs to be with the extracted code. Can you  
suggest a way to put the license at the end (where I would but happier  
to have it also) and have it wind up in the extracted code?

On Aug 13, 2009, at 2:04 PM, SM wrote:

> copyright statement for the code is 32 lines while the code (ABNF)  
> is only five lines.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

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From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:34:06 -0700

At 2:12 PM -0700 8/13/09, Fred Baker wrote:
>That's essentially why we are trying to enable folks to put a reference in. The license needs to be with the extracted code. Can you suggest a way to put the license at the end (where I would but happier to have it also) and have it wind up in the extracted code?

Instead of putting it "at the end", it could be put on a web site on a URL that is epected to be long-lived. "http://www.rfc-editor.org/licenses/rfc6789-figure-1-license.txt" comes to mind.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:27:52 -0700

>to have it also) and have it wind up in the extracted code?

If I understood the question, it is about automated extraction of the 
code.  That would require changes to the boilerplate; something I 
won't even suggest, to identify a specific paragraph for the license 
so that it can be picked up and added as a preface to the code.

At 14:34 13-08-2009, Paul Hoffman wrote:
>Instead of putting it "at the end", it could be put on a web site on 
>a URL that is epected to be long-lived. 
>"http://www.rfc-editor.org/licenses/rfc6789-figure-1-license.txt" 
>comes to mind.

The objective, in this particular case, is to have a self-contained 
document.  The above URL is somewhat similar to what the IETF Trust proposed.

Thanks for the answers,
-sm

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From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:22:07 -0400

On 2009-08-13, at 17:34, Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]> wrote:
> a URL that is epected to be long-lived. "http://www.rfc-editor.org/licenses/rfc6789-figure-1-license.txt 
> " comes to mind.

I don't think I've seen this suggested yet, but I may have missed it.   
Why not have these "stable" licences published in RFCs?  Those are  
already an archival format, so the reference is then not ambiguous.  
The code could then just include a  [RFCnnnn] reference, I guess?

Again, my apologies if this has been hashed out somewhere.
-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

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From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:07:41 -0700

Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> already an archival format, so the reference is then not ambiguous. The 
> code could then just include a  [RFCnnnn] reference, I guess?

+1

d/--

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

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From: Rick <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:38:37 +0000 (UTC)

In article <[email-masked]>,

>copyright statement for the code is 32 lines while the code (ABNF) is 

Can a copyright even be valid for just five lines of code?

--
http://yosemitenews.info/

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From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 13:31:50 +0200

> Can a copyright even be valid for just five lines of code?

I'm told that in some jurisdictions even one line of code is sufficient.

/Simon

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 14:15:38 +0200

SM wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I was discussing RFC 5617 with someone and the person mentioned that the 
> copyright in the middle of the document is obnoxious.  The copyright 
> statement for the code is 32 lines while the code (ABNF) is only five 
> lines.
> 
> completeness, is it possible to have the statement in a paragraph near 
> the end of the document and put in a note before the ABNF to refer to it?
> 
> Regards,
> -sm

Oh my.

Could somebody clarify what the current situation with respect to ABNF 
is? Our WG documents (HTTPbis) contain ABNF fragments all over the 
place, and we're definitively NOT going to insert a copyright statement 
everywhere.

BR, Julian

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From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 11:16:48 -0400

1) There is no need to put licenses in the RFC at all.  In fact, the 
trust document says clearly that putting license text in RFCs is a bad idea.
2) The trust policy states that when code is extracted from an RFC, it 
must be marked for attribution, and that the extractor can modify and 
use the code as they see fit.  The license marking is on the extracted 
code, and is specifically to meet those goals.

THE TRUST IS DOING WHAT WE ASKED THEM TO DO.

3) In order to determine what is code within an RFC, the trust has 
published a list:
     http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/Code-Components-List-4-23-09.txt
That list includes ABNF.  And XML Schema, and...
4) If you want something in your RFC treated as code, and it is not in 
that list, then you need to mark it with <CODE BEGINS> <CODE ENDS>
5) The trust as said publicly that they are looking into whether there 
is a practical way for the person who extracts code from an RFC to use a 
shorter license in their extraction.

Yours,
Joel

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From: Sean Turner <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 12:20:46 -0400

> place, and we're definitively NOT going to insert a copyright statement 

In the documents I've worked on, it seems that they just want to put the 
statement in the section that collects all the ABNF, ASN.1, XML, etc.

spt

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From: "Dave Nelson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 12:40:00 -0400

> I'm told that in some jurisdictions even one line of code is

Wow.  That seems patently silly.  Am I too late to copyright all calls to
malloc() and free()?  :-)

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:58:53 +0200

Sean Turner wrote:
> ...
> ...

Who is "they", and how is that consistent with what Joel just told us?

BR, Julian

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From: Sean Turner <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 13:22:41 -0400

Julian Reschke wrote:
> Sean Turner wrote:
>> ...
>> In the documents I've worked on, it seems that they just want to put 
>> the statement in the section that collects all the ABNF, ASN.1, XML, etc.
>> ...
> 

This might be overtaken by events, but I believe the "they" was the IESG 
because they added the following RFC editor notes to the ASN.1 modules 
in the these two documents:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/idtracker/ballot/3053/
http://www.ietf.org/ibin/c5i?mid=6&rid=49&gid=0&k1=934&k2=6530&tid=1250356550

spt

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From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 14:17:13 -0400

I would consider that OBE.  As I understand it, the trust procedures no 
longer require those  license statements in RFCs.

Yours,
Joel

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From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 15 Aug 2009 18:59:33 -0000

>longer require those  license statements in RFCs.

As of a few days ago it certainly did.  Otherwise we wouldn't have put
the license into RFC 5617 for the two lines (five after folding for
margins) of ABNF.

R's,
John

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From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:59:37 +0200

> trust document says clearly that putting license text in RFCs is a bad

Really?  I'm sure the tools team will be delighted to hear that they no
longer needs to spend time on syncing the license text generated by
their tools.

Alas, I don't think what you are saying is correct.  The trust documents
appears to me clearly require that license texts are put in RFCs
depending on the circumstances.

/Simon