Eric, Thank you for the careful reading and constructive suggestions. > This document contains material from IETF Documents or IETF > Contributions published before November 10, 2008 and, to the > Contributor?s knowledge, the person(s) controlling the > copyright in > such material have not granted the IETF Trust the right to allow > modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process. > Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) > controlling > the copyright, this document may not be modified outside the IETF > Standards Process, and derivative works of it may not be created > outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format it for > publication as an RFC and to translate it into languages > other than > English. > > The first problem here is the phrase "and, to the Contributor's > knowledge, the person(s) controlling the copyright in such material > have not granted the IETF Trust the right...". As I read this, I am > directly affirming my belief that there are copyright holders who have > not granted these rights. This is all fine if I know exactly who the > original copyright holders are and that they have not given > permission, but the more likely case is that I don't know one way or > the other, and am simply unwilling to affirm the converse. > However, I am equally unwilling to affirm my knowledge and belief > that the persons controlling the copyright have not made grants. > I simply don't know. This text should be rewritten as: > > This document contains material from IETF Documents or IETF > Contributions published before November 10, 2008. Some material > may be subject to copyright claims for which the holders have not > granted the IETF Trust the right to allow modifications of such > material outside the IETF Standards Process. With a little bit of wordsmithing, I think that rephrasing this sentence is fine. > > In addition, the final sentence "Without obtaining..." seems overly > strong. It's phrased as if it were a condition imposed by the > contributor, i.e., I the contributor doesn't license you to use > this document unless you obtain "adequate" permission from > the original > copyright holders (with the contributor to be the judge of adequate, > perhaps). But that's not what's in play here. Rather, > it's that I the contributor can't give me license to material > I don't control. So, this sentence serves as advice, not > a license restriction Actually, this is not correct. The sentence *is* intended as a license restriction, not merely advice. Remember: all of this language is being included pursuant to the authority granted to the Trust under Section 5.3.c of RFC 5378, which allows a Contributor to limit the Trust's right to grant derivative works (and thus avoid non-compliance with the warranty contained in Section 5.6.c). Thus, I'm happy to discuss re-wording the sentence to make it clearer, but changing its meaning in this way would not allow the Trust to address this issue within the parameters of RFC 5378. > and should be rewritten accordingly. > Perhaps: > > Modification or creation of derivative works outside of the > scope of RFC 4978 may require obtaining a license from the > person(s) controlling the copyright on the relevant sections > of the document. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf