Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman@xxxxxxxx> writes: > At 11:15 AM +0200 3/30/08, Simon Josefsson wrote: >>If the trust uses a software license for code that doesn't meet the >>requirements in, say, the DFSG, would you consider that a failure? If >>that happens, Debian cannot include such code. > > At 11:25 AM +0200 3/30/08, Simon Josefsson wrote: >>There are examples of projects with good intentions that want to give >>everyone the right to use code they publish in any way to end up with >>copying conditions that prevent some subset of the community from using >>the software. >> >>Look at the mailing list archive of debian-legal. Most of the software >>licenses that are reviewed there have been written by organizations that >>wants open source-friendly distribution of their code, but happens to >>make one mistake or the other. > > These are interesting points, but maybe not interesting in the way > you intended. If some large group (in this example, the Debian folks) > want to have some restriction on what they can use in their software, > that's fine. But that doesn't mean that the IETF needs to do anything > beyond what it wants to do in order to cater to that group's current > desires. Every such group could act just like the IETF does: look > around at what the problems it is facing and change the way it acts > based on an analysis of the problems. We disagree here. I believe the IETF has a responsibility to chose a license that works well for a large majority of Internet users. To some extents, the IETF needs to cater for organizations that make up parts of the Internet. > It is the responsibility of the IETF Trust to consider what its > actions would be for the whole world. These distributions are > important. So is CiscoIBMMicrosoftEtc. So is > TeenyStartupNascentISPEtc. We agree here, but if you believe this, I don't follow your first paragraph. >>If people involved in free software licensing have trouble getting this >>right, I have little confidence that people not involved in the free >>software licensing will get the right. > > Fully agree. And this is an indication that the FOSS folks have equal > responsibility for the problem you describe. Definitely. But that doesn't make the problem smaller. >>Providing them with some >>mechanism to test their proposed license against (i.e., the >>OSD/FSD/DFSG) will help to avoid at least the most basic mistakes. > > Fully agree. Offer to help the IETF Trust with this; I suspect that > CiscoIBMMicrosoftEtc will. I have sent a note to Ray and Kurtis about offering to help the Trust chose a suitable software license. > That's different that forcing a requirement into the spec. I disagree completely with the notion that the spec doesn't have to be sufficiently clear to allow the Trust to work out a license on its own. /Simon _______________________________________________ IETF mailing list IETF@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf