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Re: Trustees License Use of Templates in RFCs

2015-03-13 14:20:38
On Friday, March 13, 2015 02:32:30 PM John C Klensin wrote:
--On Friday, March 13, 2015 11:57 -0400 Scott Kitterman

<scott(_at_)kitterman(_dot_)com> wrote:
...

"as long as the version of the template in the application is
an exact copy"  is the problem.  Freedom to modify is a
fundamental principle of free and open  source software.

Scott, I think that is an overgeneralization and a risk, but one
that is actually not relevant to what I see as the issue here.
I don't believe that anyone would seriously claim that the right
to misrepresent is a fundamental principle of FOSS or anything
else attractive.  So...

There are approximately as many visions of what FOSS is as there are people 
involved in it, so almost any generalization is inherently an over 
generalization.

It is OK (at least in the FOSS contexts with which I'm most familiar) to 
require renaming if something is modified.  Such a requirement allows concerns 
about misrepresentations to be mitigated.  

 It's

OK from a FOSS perspective to say "If you change it,  you have
to call it something else" to avoid confusion, but it has to
be  legally modifiable.

First of all, "use but acknowledge (and, by the way, don't
misrepresent)" is exactly what I believe is allowed under
existing rules.  If you, Sam, or others believe that existing
rules and/or the new template rules don't allow that, then I'm
in agreement with you that needs to be explicit in the template
rules (and, btw, for most uses of RFC text of other sorts).

If you look at what changed with the final version the change in paragraph b 
from "to make, reproduce, publish and distribute modifications of the Template 
Text (e.g., to insert specific information in place of blanks or place-
holders), and reproduce, modify and distribute such modified Template Text." to 
"insert specific information in place of blanks or place-holders in the 
Template Text, and to reproduce, publish and distribute the Template Text 
combined with such insertions." it's very clear that modifications to the 
template text are not meant to be allowed.

Beyond that, if the rule says something equivalent to "copy
without modification other than providing for filling in
blanks", that doesn't prevent writing FOSS software that does
just that, nor does it prevent writing FOSS software that
supports filling in of templates.  I can imagine several ways in
which it would make such software less attractive than one might
optimally like.  If I believed your assertion in its broadest
form, I can imagine how the rule would offend someone's moral
sense and thereby cause them to decide to spend time in other
ways that writing such software.  But I'm unpersuaded that it
_prevents_ someone from writing such software.

More precisely it prevents the template itself from being included in the FOSS 
software and having the combined work be considered Free. Writing the software 
to work without having the template immediately available isn't as you 
suggest, impossible, but it's substantially complicating.  Further, it's a 
complication that serves no purpose.  As I read it, the template text isn't 
modifiable at all.

Scott K