in addition to John's concerns the proposed statement is clearly unlikely to be accurate since it is making a statement about the existing contents of the wiki maybe they ar actually saying that they work that posts to the wiki should be considered contributions to the standards process rather than that some of the postings were such contributions seems to me that at best the IETF could say "All contributions to this wiki are subject to the requirements summarized in the IETF Note Well" (of course, John is right that the Note Well is not the definitive articulation of the responsibilities of those who make contributions in the IETF standards process) Scott > On Feb 15, 2023, at 1:47 PM, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > Jay and Trustees, > > (I've taken the liberty of copying the IETF list because this > type of licensing change appears to affect the entire community, > not just those who are participating in or following tools > development.) > > I think the principle of moving from CC to IETF-specific rules > is just fine. However, I question whether doing so by > referencing/ incorporating the Note Well is a good way to > accomplish that. The problem as I see it is that the Note Well > is a somewhat informal narrative document that points to other > things. Those other things get careful review and are clearly > community consensus documents. The Note Well is more > explanatory, has been revised with less formal determination of > community consensus, and has evolved to contain considerable > material that has nothing to do with IPR. The current version > now even begins "This is a reminder of IETF policies...". > Telling someone who is, e.g., about to join a mailing list or > participate in a meeting to go read the Note Well and understand > and accept what it includes (directly and by reference) is, IMO, > fine. But we have changed it many times to make it more clear > (also a good thing) without detailed community review and > approval. Nothing wrong with that either, as long as it is > narrative/ explanatory. But, where things move from an > explanation to participants and a collection of pointers to an > actual license, I think that license should be referencing > primary materials, or at least an easily located Trust document > that does so, not less formal narrative/ explanatory text, > especially when the latter contains irrelevant material. > > best, > john > > > --On Wednesday, February 15, 2023 15:52 +0000 Jay Daley > <exec-director@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> This is a heads up that the IETF Trust have asked us to change >> the licensing on the IETF wiki (and by implication our other >> user-editable wikis) from CC BY 4.0 to "All content is covered >> by the IETF Note Well" as they are concerned that our wikis >> contain contributions to the standards process and these are >> not normally licensed under CC By 4.0. We will be making this >> change on Friday. >> >> We are also talking to the Trust about how to ensure that >> contributions to the wiki are managed in accordance with RFC >> 5378. This may require some significant changes in the >> contribution and content management model for the wikis. I am >> hopeful that the Trust will raise this directly with the >> community in due course. > >
