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Joel M. Halpern | 1 May 2007 01:15

Fwd: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-ipr-outbound-rights-03.txt

As specified, the revised outbound I-D is at the repository.
(Yes, I know the WG was copied by the I-D editor.  But some people 
filter such messages.
Joel

>To: i-d-announce <at> ietf.org
>From: Internet-Drafts <at> ietf.org
>Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:50:02 -0400
>Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-ipr-outbound-rights-03.txt
>
>A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts
>directories.
>This draft is a work item of the Intellectual Property Rights 
>Working Group of the IETF.
>
>         Title           : Advice to the Trustees of the IETF Trust 
> on Rights to be Granted in IETF Documents
>         Author(s)       : J. Halpern
>         Filename        : draft-ietf-ipr-outbound-rights-03.txt
>         Pages           : 9
>         Date            : 2007-4-30
>
>Contributors grant intellectual property rights to the IETF.  The
>    IETF trust holds and manages those rights on behalf of the IETF.  The
>    Trustees of the IETF trust are responsible for that management.  This
>    management includes granting the licenses to copy, implement and
>    otherwise use IETF contributions, among them Internet-Drafts and
>    RFCs.  The Trustees of the IETF trust accepts direction from the IETF
>    regarding the rights to be granted.  This document describes the
>    desires of the IETF regarding outbound rights to be granted in IETF
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Brian E Carpenter | 3 May 2007 10:35
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Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-ipr-outbound-rights-03.txt

I'm pretty happy with this version.

One minor substantive comment:

> 6.3.  Rights Granted for Implementing based on IETF Contributions
...
> 
>    Additionally, the Trustees of the IETF Trust should define a
>    textually representation to be included in an IETF contribution to
>    indicate that a portion of the document is considered by the authors
>    (and later the working group, and upon approval the IETF) to be code,
>    and to be subject to the permissions granted to use code.

I think this needs to be "optionally included", to be completely
clear about the intention.

Nits:

> 1.  Introduction
> 
>    Under the current operational and administrative structures, IETF
>    intellectual property rights are vested in the IETF trust
>    administered by a board of trustees made up of the members of the
>    IASA [RFC4371].  

That should be IAOC. IASA potentially includes other people too.

> 3.  When This Document Takes Effect
> 
>
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Simon Josefsson | 3 May 2007 13:44
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Section 6.5: Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions

6.5.  Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions

   There have been contexts where the material in an IETF contribution
   is also available under other license terms.  The IETF wishes to be
   able to include content which is available under such licenses.  It
   is desirable to indicate in the IETF contribution that other licenses
   are available.  It would be inappropriate and confusing if such
   additional licenses restricted the rights the IETF intends to grant
   in the content of RFCS.

The first sentence strikes me as confusing when reading the second
sentence.  In the second sentence, the material is already included in
the IETF contribution, therefor a "wish to be able to include it" seems
confusing.  Why wish to include something that is already included?

I wonder if the intention here is rather that there may be material,
licensed under other license terms, that may be useful to include in
IETF contributions?

If so, I would rewrite the first sentence as:

   There have been contexts where material available under other license
   terms are relevant to an IETF contribution.

I believe this would cover the case of including example code with a BSD
license, as for example in RFC 4226.

Section 6.5 continues:

   However, the IETF does not wish to have IETF Contributions contain
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John C Klensin | 3 May 2007 15:47

Re: Section 6.5: Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions


--On Thursday, May 03, 2007 1:44 PM +0200 Simon Josefsson 
<simon <at> josefsson.org> wrote:

> 6.5.  Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions
>
>    There have been contexts where the material in an IETF
> contribution    is also available under other license terms.
> The IETF wishes to be    able to include content which is
> available under such licenses.  It    is desirable to indicate
> in the IETF contribution that other licenses    are available.
> It would be inappropriate and confusing if such    additional
> licenses restricted the rights the IETF intends to grant    in
> the content of RFCS.
>
> The first sentence strikes me as confusing when reading the
> second sentence.  In the second sentence, the material is
> already included in the IETF contribution, therefor a "wish to
> be able to include it" seems confusing.  Why wish to include
> something that is already included?

I agree with Simon that this is confusing.

Let me take a shot at guessing what the intent might be.

Suppose I submit something as an IETF Contribution.   Suppose I 
have granted, or am willing to grant, licenses to others under 
other circumstances.  I think what is being said here is that 
the IETF understands that it is in everyone's interest to make 
the information about those other licenses, or about how the
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Simon Josefsson | 3 May 2007 16:36
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Re: Section 6.5: Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions

John C Klensin <john-ietf <at> jck.com> writes:

> Does that disentangle things?

If put into the document, that would at least make the situation
clearer.  I don't think the situation would be ideal though.

If I understand your proposal correctly, it does not allow the inclusion
of material taken from BSD/GPL implementations into IETF documents, at
least not without permission to re-license the material under the IETF
license from all copyright holders.

I believe, for example, example code is helpful in many stages when new
technology is introduced -- testing, implementing, interop testing etc.
For example, I believe that IDNA implementations would not have been
available as quickly if the Punycode code had not been available in the
RFC.  Essentially, it is good for the IETF if the standards are easier
and quicker to implement and deploy.  Therefor, I believe the IETF rules
should permit including external material.  If you look in the last
years worth of RFCs, there is already source code borrowed from external
projects, with various licensing conditions in them.  I haven't seen
anyone claim it has been bad for the IETF to include such code, and I
know people find it useful.  So it is already appear to be running
practice.

I don't know if it is possible to devise a license situation which would
make everyone happy here.  It depends on whether people believe having
additional copyright notices and licenses is harmful.  As someone who
contributes to software with multiple copyright notices and multiple
licenses every day, I feel perfectly comfortable with that situation.
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Brian E Carpenter | 3 May 2007 17:02
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Re: Section 6.5: Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions

On 2007-05-03 16:36, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> John C Klensin <john-ietf <at> jck.com> writes:
> 
>> Does that disentangle things?
> 
> If put into the document, that would at least make the situation
> clearer.  I don't think the situation would be ideal though.
> 
> If I understand your proposal correctly, it does not allow the inclusion
> of material taken from BSD/GPL implementations into IETF documents, at
> least not without permission to re-license the material under the IETF
> license from all copyright holders.

I think that's correct, and I have the feeling that is where we will
find the least rough consensus.

To be clear, if I write some code, contribute it to the IETF, and
subsequently contribute it to an open source project, I don't see
a problem. If I do it the other way round, that might be awkward.

      Brian
> 
> I believe, for example, example code is helpful in many stages when new
> technology is introduced -- testing, implementing, interop testing etc.
> For example, I believe that IDNA implementations would not have been
> available as quickly if the Punycode code had not been available in the
> RFC.  Essentially, it is good for the IETF if the standards are easier
> and quicker to implement and deploy.  Therefor, I believe the IETF rules
> should permit including external material.  If you look in the last
> years worth of RFCs, there is already source code borrowed from external
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todd glassey | 3 May 2007 17:38
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Re: Section 6.5: Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions

Open Source licenses cannot grant more rights to that code or change the 
original licensing of that or its derivatives however...

Todd Glassey
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian E Carpenter" <brc <at> zurich.ibm.com>
To: "Simon Josefsson" <simon <at> josefsson.org>
Cc: "John C Klensin" <john-ietf <at> jck.com>; <ipr-wg <at> ietf.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 8:02 AM
Subject: Re: Section 6.5: Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions

> On 2007-05-03 16:36, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> John C Klensin <john-ietf <at> jck.com> writes:
>>
>>> Does that disentangle things?
>>
>> If put into the document, that would at least make the situation
>> clearer.  I don't think the situation would be ideal though.
>>
>> If I understand your proposal correctly, it does not allow the inclusion
>> of material taken from BSD/GPL implementations into IETF documents, at
>> least not without permission to re-license the material under the IETF
>> license from all copyright holders.
>
> I think that's correct, and I have the feeling that is where we will
> find the least rough consensus.
>
> To be clear, if I write some code, contribute it to the IETF, and
> subsequently contribute it to an open source project, I don't see
> a problem. If I do it the other way round, that might be awkward.
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Joel M. Halpern | 4 May 2007 01:41

Re: Section 6.5: Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions

My personal understanding of what I thought I was trying to say.

1) Obviously, whatever I meant it needs to be fixed.  Suggestions 
such as the one below are necessary.
2) There are two different issues that we had said we wanted to 
address in this section, as I understood it.  One is the issue 
mentioned separately by Brian, and one is the issue mentioned 
separately by Simon.

a) With regard to code which is also available under other terms (for 
example because it was written after the IETF code segment) we wanted 
to acknowledge that this was perfectly acceptable, and suggest thtat 
techniques like contacting the author were appropriate for finding 
these.  (Originally it just said "contact the author" as per John's 
comment below.  I changed that because someone had said roughly ~it 
is not always necessary or desirable to contact the author.~)

b) With regard to code that is licensed under different rules with 
some restrictions not in the IETF rules, that code can not be 
included as sample code in the IETF documents.  I was told that the 
rough consensus was against allowing more restrictive licenses to be 
included in the documents.  So, for example, any code that requires 
that changes be returned to the origin can not be included as code in 
an IETF document according to these rules.   Would it be nice to be 
able to use such code?  Sure.  But having multiple different sets of 
rules, and license terms in documents, and efforts to decide ~are we 
willing to include this code with this license?~ was not what the 
group decided.

Yours,
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Don Armstrong | 4 May 2007 01:41
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Re: Section 6.5: Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions

On Thu, 03 May 2007, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> On 2007-05-03 16:36, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> >If put into the document, that would at least make the situation
> >clearer. I don't think the situation would be ideal though.
> >
> >If I understand your proposal correctly, it does not allow the inclusion
> >of material taken from BSD/GPL implementations into IETF documents, at
> >least not without permission to re-license the material under the IETF
> >license from all copyright holders.
> 
> I think that's correct, and I have the feeling that is where we will
> find the least rough consensus.
> 
> To be clear, if I write some code, contribute it to the IETF, and
> subsequently contribute it to an open source project, I don't see a
> problem. If I do it the other way round, that might be awkward.

If you were the copyright holder, it wouldn't matter either way,
because you could just grant appropriate rights to the IETF after
granting appropriate rights to the FOSS project.

The only place where this becomes an issue is taking code which cannot
be relicesed to the IETF but is useful and placing it in a standards
document.

Getting back to the main issue, I would think that licenses like
MIT/Expat or the 1,2,4-clause BSD license would be appropriate even
for inclusion in IETF works because they contain no significant
restrictions on the use of the code. GPLed and other works may cause a
problem, because they inherently restrict wide inclusion of code in
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todd glassey | 4 May 2007 19:49
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Re: Section 6.5: Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions

Simon -

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Simon Josefsson" <simon <at> josefsson.org>
To: <ipr-wg <at> ietf.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 4:44 AM
Subject: Section 6.5: Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions

> 6.5.  Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions
>
>   There have been contexts where the material in an IETF contribution
>   is also available under other license terms.

This is critical since it means that the IETF's Outgoing Licensing must meet 
the requirements of all of that other licensing.

Likewise, publishing any document and its Code Inclusions for any and all 
uses, clearly violates the Research Exemption section from the US Copyright 
code as well, since the only exemption is for specific research and not "any 
and all" uses as the IETF has stated in its outgoing licensing.

>   The IETF wishes to be
>   able to include content which is available under such licenses.

Again - so if this is true, then the terms and conditions of those licenses 
need to be retained in the IETF's outgoing rights model.

>   It
>   is desirable to indicate in the IETF contribution that other licenses
>   are available.
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