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IETF and open source license compatibility (Was: Re: yet another comment on draft-housley-tls-authz-extns-07.txt)

2009-02-12 07:41:46
Simon,

That's not possible because the IETF policies does not permit free
software compatible licensing on Internet drafts published by the IETF.
...
See RFC 5378:

   It is also important to note that additional copyright notices are
   not permitted in IETF Documents except ...
...

The IETF copying conditions are not compatible with free software
licenses (modification is not allowed), and additional copyright notices
are not permitted.  The vast majority of free software licenses is built
on the concept of copyright notices and requires preserving the
copyright notice.

I agree that there are problematic case, but I believe I hope everyone realizes this is only the case if the RFC in question has code. Otherwise it really does not matter. Only some RFCs have code.

I support experiments in this space, though. And it would be really good to get more of the open source folk participate in IETF specification work. There are many important open source extensions and protocols that fit in IETF's scope but were never documented. Even if source code is freely available, you could have several implementations, commercial vs. open source interoperability issues, etc.

Jari

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