Ray Pelletier <rpelletier@xxxxxxxx> writes: > All>> The redline of the Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents dated> 9-8-08 has been uploaded to> http://trustee.ietf.org/policyandprocedures.html in doc, pdf and rtf> formats. Thanks for posting an update, Ray. There are two regressions from earlier versions: #1: The new text in section 4.c. introduce a regression over earlierdocuments. Quoting the new text: c. License. When Code Components are copied, published, displayed or distributed as part of a document that is intended to be read or referenced by persons, and not for direct processing by a computer, they are licensed under the terms set forth in Section 3 of these Legal Provisions. When Code Components are copied, published, displayed or distributed for direct processing by a computer, they are hereby licensed to each person who wishes to receive such a license on the terms of the “BSD License”, as follows: This confuses the definition of "code component". With the above text,the following <CODE BEGINS> // increment a a = a + 1 <CODE ENDS> begs the question whether the code component is intended to be read bypersons or by a computer, and the answer to that question leads todifferent licenses for the work. It could be argued that code in a textual document are intended for useby persons. The consequence of that argument is that no code in IETFdocuments would be covered by the BSD license. It could be argued more strongly that comments in code components areintended for humans, and thus would not be licensed under the BSDlicense. It is valuable to be able to copy comments in source code intoexternal code. With the new text, that is not possible. The distinction of code components intended to be used by persons orintended for use by computers have not been discussed before. It is notpart of the instructions in outbound-rights-07 as far as I can tell. Again, I want to quote the instructions given to the Trust about codecomponents in outbound-rights-07: As such, the rough consensus is that the IETF Trust is to grant rights such that code components of IETF contributions can be extracted, modified, and used by anyone in any way desired. There are no qualifications of the intended use by such code componentsin the instructions. I see the new text as a "field of use" restriction. The IPR WG havediscussed field of use restrictions of the code license many times, andthe result has always been that field of use restrictions are a badidea. Finally, the current text is also internally inconsistent with thetext in 4.a: a. Definition. IETF Contributions and IETF Documents often include components intended to be directly processed by a computer (“Code Components”). A list of common Code Components can be found at http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/Code_Components_List_8-12-08.txt . Thus by definition Code Components are intended to be processed by acomputer, and the new text in section 4.c does not make sense. Solution to problem------------------- I suggest to remove the newly added text, making section 4.c read: c. License. Code Components are hereby licensed to each person who wishes to receive such a license on the terms of the “BSD License”, as follows: Without this change, I believe it is not sufficiently clear that codecomponents are _only_ licensed under the BSD license. #2: Regarding 4.b. A fix you made to address one of my earlier commentshave regressed. I brought this up in my initial review of the document,see #4 in: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.ipr/5360 The problem was fixed in the 07-17-08 version which used this text: For ease of reference, Code Components in IETF RFCs MUST be clearly identified as code, and one technique for clearly identifying it is <CODE BEGINS> <CODE ENDS>. The text is similar in the 08-05-08 version. However, the text in the08-13-08 version changed this, and my concern re-surface. The latesttext says: b. Identification. Text in IETF Contributions and IETF Documents of the types identified in Section 4.a above shall constitute “Code Components”. In addition, any text found between the markers <CODE BEGINS> and <CODE ENDS> shall be considered a “Code Component”. The problem is that it is impossible to textually describe that parts ofdocuments are intended as code components. Allowing this would simplifyreading of documents and avoids ugly markups which can become excessive.Consider a document that contains: Appendix A. This sections in this Appendix contains a pseudo code implementation of the twenty parts of the FOOBAR algorithm. Each part is intended to be treated as a Code Component as described by [IETF-Trust-Legal-Provisions]. Appendix A.1. ... Appendix A.2 ... Appendix A.20 This reads much better than having to use <CODE BEGIN>..<CODE END>inside each and every appendix. Thus, I suggest to change the above sentence to: b. Identification. Text in IETF Contributions and IETF Documents of the types identified in Section 4.a above shall constitute “Code Components”. In addition, any text found between the markers <CODE BEGINS> and <CODE ENDS> shall be considered a “Code Component”. Alternatively, text in the document that refer to this rule can be added to denote which portions are intended to be regarded as Code Components. You could also revert to the earlier text used in the 08-05-08 and08-13-08 version: b. Identification. For ease of reference, Code Components in IETF RFCs MUST be clearly identified as code, and one technique for clearly identifying it is <CODE BEGINS> <CODE ENDS>. One final comment: #3: For good style, attribute the origin of the BSD license text used. Ifthe IETF requests of others to attribute origins of work, setting a goodexample helps. According to Jorge in<http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.ipr/5379> the source is:http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php Thanks,Simon_______________________________________________Ietf mailing listIetf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf