Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:57:01 +0200
From: Harald Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Message-ID: <4A6566BD.1080404@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
| We have two possibilities:
|
| 1 - the update consists of revisions of *every single RFC* that
| references the BSD license
| 2 - some RFCs continue to carry the BSD license, even while the "real"
| current license is different.
Harald,
what you're anticipating there is absurd, if an RFC gets issued containing
code with the BSD licence, then that is the licence that code, in that RFC
will have forevermore, nothing can change that - and nothing should change
that, nothng the trustees or community can do can ever change that - only
the rights holder (author) of the code can cause it to be offered with
some different licence. Any system where it even looked as if it were
possible for anyone to simply alter the licence under which code that
had previously been published became available would be a disaster.
The issue is, and must be, entirely the licence under which code must be
offered in order to be published - that the IETF can decide - no code in an
RFC unless it has this licence on it (or one of those licences, or whatever
the community wants). There is no obligation to publish code if it doesn't
meet our requirements, but once we have published it, and the IETF and code
authors have agreed upon licence terms for the code, the IETF (or trustees)
cannot simplly arbitrarily change the licence.
So, it seems to me as if what you're trying to accomplish is just absurd,
we don't want to, or need to, go back and change old RFCs, the licence on
code in those RFCs is, and always will be, whatever it says in that RFC
(which doesn't stop the author also offering the same code, via other
methods, with different licence terms - nor from one of those other
methods being via the IETF, either via the web page, or in a new RFC.
Given that, and the desire for considered community input, rather than
arbitrary trustee action, I think the proposed wording is better than
your proposed alternative.
On he latter, Joel at least interpreted your original message as giving the
TLP a status where ...
jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx said:
| Otherwise, once the RFC came out, everyone must forever use BSD, even if
| the community decided that everyone should henceforth use ABC.
which is impossible, nothing that we ever do can never be changed in the
future (as it applies in the further future) - if we were to decide later
that ABC is better than BSD, the TLP can be changed, just as they are now.
The only question currently is the method by which that should happen, by
an explicit community review process (just as now) or by simple trustee
action, simply publishing a changed requirement. The original wording is
the former, Harald's proposal suggests the latter.
kre
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