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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
projects.[1]
If the requirements for the inclusion of code are written in an
affirmative manner, that is to say users of included code must be able
to do X, Y, Z, then the actual license that the code is under matters
little so long as it complies. The downside is an increased need for
tracking the actual license of a code, but considering that the IETF
will have to track the copyright and licensing state of every
copyrightable work submitted anyway, it should not be significant.
Don Armstrong
1: I should note here that even the FSF has PD'd quite a few important
works specifically to allow the type of interoperability that the IETF
seeks to acchieve, so I'd think that at least some copyright holders
would be willing to relicense even GPLed works appropriately.
--
N: Why should I believe that?"
B: Because it's a fact."
N: Fact?"
B: F, A, C, T... fact"
N: So you're saying that I should believe it because it's true.
That's your argument?
B: It IS true.
-- "Ploy" http://www.mediacampaign.org/multimedia/Ploy.MPG
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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Subject: Re: Section 6.5: Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions
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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
projects.[1]
If the requirements for the inclusion of code are written in an
affirmative manner, that is to say users of included code must be able
to do X, Y, Z, then the actual license that the code is under matters
little so long as it complies. The downside is an increased need for
tracking the actual license of a code, but considering that the IETF
will have to track the copyright and licensing state of every
copyrightable work submitted anyway, it should not be significant.
Don Armstrong
1: I should note here that even the FSF has PD'd quite a few important
works specifically to allow the type of interoperability that the IETF
seeks to acchieve, so I'd think that at least some copyright holders
would be willing to relicense even GPLed works appropriately.
--
N: Why should I believe that?"
B: Because it's a fact."
N: Fact?"
B: F, A, C, T... fact"
N: So you're saying that I should believe it because it's true.
That's your argument?
B: It IS true.
-- "Ploy" http://www.mediacampaign.org/multimedia/Ploy.MPG
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
_______________________________________________
Ipr-wg mailing list
Ipr-wg at ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg