Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 12:11:20AM +0100, Simon Josefsson wrote: >> Have Debian evaluated the new RFC copying conditions? Quoting >> <ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3667.txt> section 3.3: >> >> a. To the extent that a Contribution or any portion thereof is >> protected by copyright and other rights of authorship, the >> Contributor, and each named co-Contributor, and the organization >> he or she represents or is sponsored by (if any) grant a >> perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide >> right and license to the ISOC and the IETF under all intellectual > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > A license that is not even granted to us, let alone the rest of the > world, is of no use to us. If this is really the only license provided > then we can't even redistribute the things - only the ISOC and IETF > can do that. It appears that rfc 3667 does not refer to us at all (see > section 7.5). > > Somebody should check whether older rfcs have a similar problem. Did > anybody actually grant a license to *us* to distribute them at all?
I agree with you. I have been trying to illuminate the IETF about that part of the license, with little success. As far as I can tell, members of the IETF IPR working group doesn't understand what RFC 3667 is saying, as illustrated by the RFC editor's summary of RFC 3667 in [1], that paint a completely different picture, or they just don't care. I'm told the FSF lawyers are looking at this, and the preliminary message I got, was that they agree with our interpretation. I believe it would be useful for the Debian community to let the IETF know about Debian's position on this. Preparing a statement and posting it to the IETF IPR working group seem appropriate, and would be appreciated. Thanks, Simon [1] http://www.rfc-editor.org/copyright.html
