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Re: Last Call for Comments on " Legal Provisions Related to IETF Documents"

2008-08-13 05:47:30
On Tuesday 12 August 2008 19:04, Paul Hoffman wrote:
At 9:33 AM +1200 8/13/08, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
How about adding some weasel words, or even simply making the
attribution requirement a "should"? I think it's perfectly reasonable
to ask for attribution when possible, so any form of words that
doesn't "break" the BSD license in a narrow legalistic sense
would do fine for me.

It's not like we're asking for much:

# This code was derived from IETF RFC XXXX. Please retain this
comment if possible.

I would prefer a request to weasel words because it would be clearer.

   Please give attribution of the source of the code in the code itself,
   such as "https://shipit.ubuntu.com/specialrequest

I'd suggest being even more subtle.  

The copyright statement cannot be removed (and that is fine with any license 
that I'm aware of), so it will always be clear that the code came from an 
RFC.  I believe that the IETF is sufficiently notable that the IETF standard 
copyright notice is roughly sufficient for this.

What this lacks is knowing which RFC it came from.  This is technically 
useful, but is not an IPR issue.

My suggestion is adopt a rule that code snippets in any RFC MUST include a 
comment to the effect that "This code was derived from IETF RFC XXXX".  If 
it's in the code snipppet as a comment to copy/paste virtually everyone will 
copy/paste it.  I suspect that those that wouldn't aren't likely to be 
significantly deterred by a license statement.

Once it's a documented requirement and it's on the ID nits checklist, I 
suspect that solves 99% of the problem with no license incompatibility risk.

Scott K
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