Thanks for publishing a new version of the document. There has been
some regressions in this version compared to earlier versions.
#1:
The latest version of the IETF Legal Provisions adds a new section 4.d.:
d. Attribution. In addition to the language required under the
BSD License, each Code Component must be clearly attributed to
IETF and identify the RFC or other IETF Document or IETF
Contribution from which it is taken.
That license condition is beyond what the BSD license requires. That
means the above license clause needs to be included in the license text
of every code copied from a RFC, since the requirement applies to all
material derived from code extracted from an RFC.
It also means that code copied from an IETF document cannot be used as
"BSD code", because the above restriction needs to be preserved in every
modified copy of the code.
This variation of the BSD license is original, and MAY be incompatible
with some free software licenses; at least it does not appear to have
been reviewed for compatibility by anyone familiar with free software
licensing.
It is important to use an already widely reviewed free software license
instead of inventing new licenses! There are plenty of examples of bad
things that happen if this advice isn't followed, see [1] [2] for two
histories.
Explained in a different way, the above new addition is against what the
IETF has expressed in draft-ietf-ipr-outbound-rights-07.txt:
As such, the rough consensus is that the IETF Trust is to grant
rights such that code components of IETF contributions can be
extracted, modified, and used by anyone in any way desired.
The new clause 4.d. is incompatible with the expressed wish of the IETF,
in my reading. The outbound-rights-07 document doesn't say anything
about preserving attribution for code components.
The concern regarding code attribution was discussed in the IPR WG a
long time ago, when people brought up similar ideas about requiring
attributions. As far as I could tell, no consensus developed, and
consequently the document didn't say anything related to attribution for
code components.
Please remove section 4.d completely.
#2:
There is another addition to section 4.c of the new document version:
c. License. Code Components are hereby licensed to each person
who wishes to receive such a license on the terms of the “BSD
License”, as follows (in addition to any licenses granted with
respect to the text of such Code Components as they appear in
IETF Contributions or IETF Documents pursuant to Section 3
above):
The text inside the parenthesis is new.
The use of the word "in addition to" implies that the code components
will NOT be strictly licensed only under the BSD license, but under a
dual-license of the BSD license and the restrictive license (for text in
RFCs) in section 3 of the document. That is likely what is intended
too: code components should be possible to use just like text from RFCs
under the normal (section 3) IETF rules.
In a dual-license situation, to be able to use the code component under
only the BSD license, the license needs to grant you the right to drop
one of the license texts for it.
This is the same problem as explained in my initial comment on this
document, see #1 in:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.ipr/5360
What is missing is text such as the following:
The licensee can chose whether to use the BSD License or the Section 3
rules when extracting this component.
Once a licensee has extracted a component under the BSD license, that
version cannot later be used under the IETF section 3 rules.
Alternatively, you could adopt the suggestion I made in my initial
comment: clearly say that licensee can use the BSD license as the ONLY
license for extracted code components. This would avoid much confusion
about which license applies to code components extracted from RFCs.
The text to add would be:
To clarify, the entire license for Code Components is the above
BSD license, and if you use this license for a Code Component,
the license terms in section 3 does not apply to that material.
#3:
The URL given for "common code components" doesn't work:
www.ietf.org/trust/code.
Thanks,
/Simon
[1] http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html
[2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html
"Ed Juskevicius" <edj(_at_)nortel(_dot_)com> writes:
This is to announce that the IETF Trustees have just
posted a revised version of a draft policy on
"Legal Provisions Related to IETF Documents" dated
08-05-08 at:
http://trustee.ietf.org/policyandprocedures.html
This draft includes all of the changes agreed during
the July 31st meeting of the IPR working group held
in Dublin.
On behalf of the IETF Trustees, we invite your
review and final comments and suggestions on this
policy.
The IETF Trustees will meet via telechat on Aug 21st
with the goal of finalizing this policy. If you
have any final comments, please post them on the
IPR WG mailing list.
Best Regards, and Thanks in advance,
Ed Juskevicius Ray Pelletier
Chair Trustee
IETF Trust IETF Administrative Director
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