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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,
Joel


At 09:47 AM 5/3/2007, John C Klensin wrote:


--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   From ipr-wg-bounces at ietf.org Thu May 03 19:41:12 2007
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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,
Joel


At 09:47 AM 5/3/2007, John C Klensin wrote:


--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 information may be obtained, available.

Is it possible that we can sweep away the circumlocutions by simply saying something like, probably after the "authors retain all rights" statement:

   In addition to the license granted to the IETF, contributors
   how have made other licensing arrangements may document
   those arrangements as part of the contribution, using
   mechanisms that may be specified from time to time by the
   IETF Trust.  The absence of documentation of additional
   licenses should not be taken to indicate that those licenses
   are not available; instead, the author should be contacted
   for information as needed.

Note the desire to avoid getting hung up in boilerplate here. Then, if I were the Trust, I'd construct, in consultation with Counsel, one sentence that said something like "Additional licenses may be available from the author for some or all of this material, see <link>", where <link> is supplied by the author.

When that link is essentially a pointer to some well-known literary work, I'd expect to see something like "The material in this Contribution is also available under the Tie Your Hands and Feet Together (TYHAF) license whose text is available at <link>. Where it is more individualized and the author does not have a convenient mechanism for available for providing a stable link, I think the IETF should provide for posting such license materials on the same basis that we provide for posting IPR disclosures of other varieties.

Does that disentangle things?

Or, if I've missed the intent of the that section, could someone please explain it in plain English (rather than pseudo-lawyer)?

     john


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