Russ Housley wrote: > During the Wednesday Plenary at IETF 71, I gave the IETF community a > "heads up" on two documents from the IPR WG that were nearing IETF > Last Call. Both of the documents have now reached IETF Last > call. The Last Call announcements are attached. Please review and comment. I've given these drafts a first reading. The following comments may represent a misunderstanding on my part, but I provide them in the interest of clarifying the meaning of these drafts. One concern I have is the distinction between text and code. Where and how is that line drawn? What about, for example, protocol examples (of which there are many in most RFCs)? Are they text or code? Another concern is the limitation on copying of text. It seems quite reasonable for developers to include snippets of text in their programs (think literate programming), and under many code licenses it is difficult if not impossible to separately license the code and any copied text when bundled together. Regarding the copying of text, Section 4.4 of the outgoing draft says: There is no consensus at this time to permit the use of text from RFCs in contexts where the right to modify the text is required. The authors of IETF contributions may be able and willing to grant such rights independently of the rights they have granted to the IETF by making the contribution. But Section 6 of the incoming draft says: It is also important to note that additional copyright notices are not permitted in IETF Documents except in the case where such document is the product of a joint development effort between the IETF and another standards development organization or the document is a republication of the work of another standards development organization. Such exceptions must be approved on an individual basis by the IAB. So it's not clear to me how contributors could (easily) grant the right to modify text that is copied from an RFC -- unless they do so outside the Internet Standards Process (based, I suppose, on the rights retained by the contributors). However, it seems that each implementor would need to separately approach the contributors in order to do that (and how would they know that the contributors are approachable in that way if not through inclusion of some kind of notice in the relevant RFC -- and would such a notice comprise an "additional copyright notice" as described in Section 6 fo the incoming draft?). Finally, the outbound draft merely provides recommendations regarding license text and other materials, final definition of which seems to be under the sole purview of the Trustees of the IETF Trust. However, the outbound draft does not specify if the work of the Trustees shall be subject to review by the IPR WG, the IESG, the IAB, or the IETF community (e.g., in the form of an Internet-Draft) before it takes effect. Peter -- Peter Saint-Andre https://stpeter.im/
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