The IETF lawyer has written a proposal for a new outbound license to third parties for IETF documents (i.e., most RFCs and I-D). We're given one week to review it in a working group last call. Most likely there will be an IETF-wide last call later on too, but the chances of modifying anything then will be smaller.
When reviewing the license, note that IETF works in a peculiar way with regards to copying conditions -- the copyright stays with the original author, but the author grants the IETF Trust many rights, which in turn grants third parties some rights. The entire document is available from: http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ipr-rules-update-07.txt The document updates RFC 3978, and the license below make explicit references to sections 5 and 5.2 of RFC 3978: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3978.txt There are two parts to review. The first is where authors grant rights to the IETF Trust: 3.3. Rights Granted by Contributors to IETF Trust To the extent that a Contribution or any portion thereof is protected by copyright or 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 IETF Trust under all such copyrights and other rights in the Contribution, provided that the IETF Trust shall have the right to sublicense these rights solely to the extent described in Section 3.7 and 3.8 below: (A) to copy, publish, display, and distribute the Contribution, in whole or in part, (B) to prepare translations of the Contribution into languages other than English, and to copy, publish, display, and distribute such translations or portions thereof, (C) unless explicitly disallowed in the notices contained in a Contribution [as per Section 5.2 below], to modify or prepare derivative works (in addition to translations) that are based on or incorporate all or part of the Contribution, and to copy, publish, display, and distribute such derivative works, and (D) to reproduce any trademarks, service marks or trade names which are included in the Contribution solely in connection with the reproduction, distribution or publication of the Contribution and derivative works thereof as permitted by this Section 3.3, provided that when reproducing Contributions, trademark and service mark identifiers used in the Contribution, including TM and (r) will be preserved. The licenses granted in this Section 3.3 shall not be deemed to grant any right under any patent, patent application or other similar intellectual property right disclosed by the Contributor under BCP 79 or otherwise. The next part to review is the license granted from the IETF Trust to third parties: 3.8 Rights Granted by the IETF Trust to Third Parties The IETF Trust hereby grants to any person wishing to obtain such rights, to the greatest extent it is permitted to do so, the following perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide rights and licenses under all copyrights and other rights of authors, which rights may be exercised within or outside the IETF Standards Process: (A) to copy, publish, display, and distribute each IETF Document (including all Contributions and other portions thereof) in unmodified form, (B) to prepare translations of IETF Documents (including all Contributions and other portions thereof) into languages other than English, and to copy, publish, display, and distribute such translations, (C) to extract, modify, incorporate into other works, copy, publish, display, and distribute executable code or code fragments that are included in any IETF Document (such as MIB and PIB modules), subject to the notification requirements of Section 5. Giving past experience, it is not likely that we will be able to influence the text in any significant detail. Review should probably focus on high-level issues which are serious. My opinion is that the above license is not sufficient for RFC documents to be distributed with Debian, but it is sufficient for code fragments extracted from RFCs to be distributed with Debian. If you disagree with the last part (which is definitely possible -- I have only reviewed the license myself for an hour or so), which is the most important aspect right now, please motivate this carefully. Thanks, Simon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
