Re: IETF and open source license compatibility

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Simon Josefsson wrote:

actually that's intended to be permitted by RFC 5377 section 4.2:

4.2.  Rights Granted for Quoting from IETF Contributions

  There is rough consensus that it is useful to permit quoting without
  modification of excerpts from IETF Contributions.  Such excerpts may
  be of any length and in any context.  Translation of quotations is
  also to be permitted.  All such quotations should be attributed
  properly to the IETF and the IETF Contribution from which they are
  taken.

You're not permitted to modify the text. You are permitted to use it.

Exactly, and disallowing modifications prevents using the text of an RFC
as a comment in implementations licensed under free software licenses.

For short excerpts, one can use the text anyway and claim "fair use",
but larger excerpts can be useful to quote in comments or documentation
and then there is a problem.
I consider the inability to include immutable text in software released under the GPL a bug in the GPL.

BTW, this means that at least one program I have released under the GPL is illegal; it includes the GPL as a part of the source code, and since the GPL text is immutable according to the GPL, it is illegal (by this logic) to include it in source code, since the source has to be free of restrictions upon its modification.

Not My Problem to solve.

                    Harald

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