One document matched: draft-josefsson-ipr-rules-update-01.txt

Differences from draft-josefsson-ipr-rules-update-00.txt

Network Working Group                                       S. Josefsson
Internet-Draft                                          October 24, 2005
Updates: 3978 (if approved)
Expires: April 27, 2006


                            RFC 3978 Update
                  draft-josefsson-ipr-rules-update-01

Status of this Memo

   By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any
   applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware
   have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes
   aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on April 27, 2006.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).

Abstract

   Two problems with BCP 78 are identified, and a proposal to solve them
   is proposed.  The first problem is that rights granted to third
   parties in BCP 78 are more restrictive then what was permitted
   through the license in RFC 2026.  The rights granted by the new
   license is too limited for some uses of Contributions.  The uses
   include adapting portions of Contributions for online help, reference
   manuals, and source code.  The second problem is that rights to
   publish and distribute documentes are not granted to third parties.



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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Problem #1: No Rights To Adapt Parts Of Contributions . . . . . 3
   3.  Problem #2: No Rights Are Granted To Third Parties  . . . . . . 4
   4.  Revised Section 3.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   5.  Alternative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   6.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
     7.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
     7.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements  . . . . . . . . . . 9






































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1.  Introduction

   This document discuss two problems with BCP 78 [1].  Familiarity with
   that document is assumed.  Several terms defined in that document are
   used below.  In particular, this document use the term
   "Contributions" to denote material to which rights are granted.
   After describing the problems, we conclude with an update to BCP 78
   to address the problems.


2.  Problem #1: No Rights To Adapt Parts Of Contributions

   The license in RFC 2026 [2] gave third parties the right to produce
   unrestricted derivative works, under some conditions.  That right has
   widely been used to adapt RFCs into online help, reference manuals,
   source code comments and source code.  BCP 78 [1] does not grant any
   rights to permit this usage.  Examples of common usage that is not
   permitted through BCP 78 include:

   1.  Extracting parts of RFCs into source code comments, where the
       source code is licensed under a license that permits
       modifications.  Line breaks and other simple re-formatting is
       common.  Further re-formatting or expansion, to help explain the
       source code is not uncommon.
   2.  Material needed in source code may include large tables, see
       StringPrep [8].  It is customary to modify these tables and
       schemas, without changing the semantic nor affecting protocol
       interoperability, when implementing these IETF standards.  The
       modifications are because the table as-is is not valid program
       code.  Examples of deployed programs using tables derived from
       RFC 3454 include GNU Libc/Libidn, VeriSign's XCODE, and IBM's
       ICU.
   3.  ASN.1 schemas from RFCs are often incorporated into products.
       For example, see the Kerberos 5 [12] ASN.1 schema.  These schemas
       are frequently modified to be usable within particular
       implementations.  Examples of deployed programs using modified
       ASN.1 schemas for Kerberos 5 include GNU Shishi, MIT Kerberos and
       Heimdal.
   4.  Some RFCs include source code or header files that is meant to be
       included in software packages, and in practice they are
       frequently modified after inclusion in the software package.  For
       example, GSS-API C bindings [4], GSS-API Java bindings [5], SHA-1
       hash algorithm [6], SCTP checksum [7], Punycode [9], getaddrinfo
       DNS resolver API [10], multicast socket API [11].  Examples of
       deployed projects here include GSS-API libraries, libc libraries,
       and cryptographic packages.





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   5.  Material used in manuals or online help ("man" pages) may include
       protocol overviews (such as in SASL [3]) or API function
       documentation (such as in GSS-API [4]).

   This list is far from conclusive, it is meant to illustrate some of
   the problems the license in BCP 78 causes.  We argue that the usage
   explained in these examples, and others, should be permitted, and
   that BCP 78 should be updated to resolve this matter.  Adding
   specific text for each kind of usage is problematic, because we do
   not have a complete list of "good" usages at this point.  We believe
   the license text should be general enough to enable many different
   kind of usages.

   We believe that the license text chosen to resolve this matter should
   be compatible (or perhaps more accurately, given the range of
   mutually incompatible licenses below: not incompatible) with all
   licenses typically used for implementions of IETF standards.  These
   range from proprietary closed source licenses, such as Microsoft's
   End User License Agreement (EULA) [15] or Apple's Mac OS X Software
   License [16], over permissive licenses such as "public domain" or the
   MIT license [17], to copy-left licenses such as the GNU Generic
   Public License [18].  Further, we also argue that the license text
   should be aligned with the norms used in popular distribution
   mechanisms of IETF implementations, such as Debian and their Free
   Software Guidelines [19].

   The revised section in BCP 78 below is believed to resolve this
   problem.


3.  Problem #2: No Rights Are Granted To Third Parties

   Traditionally, third parties have been permitted to copy and
   distribute Contributions.  These rights were granted by the license
   text in RFC 2026 [2].  Reading BCP 78 [1] reveal that it does not
   grant any rights to third parties that permit this usage.  To explain
   how this is so, we will review the rights granted by BCP 78, and
   explain where it is failing, and reference discussion of its
   interpretation.

   All rights granted to Contributions, in section 3.3 of BCP 78, begin
   with (emphasis mine):









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     a. To the extent that a Contribution or any portion thereof is
         protected by copyright and other rights of authorship, the
         Contributor, and each named co-Contributor, and the
         organization he or she represents or is sponsored by (if
         any) grant a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-
         free, world-wide right and license to the ISOC and the IETF
                                            ------------------------
         under all intellectual property rights in the Contribution:

   That means that all the rights given in that section are given to the
   IETF and the ISOC, but not to third parties.  Similar wording occur
   in section 4.2 on rights granted for RFC Editor contributions.  The
   document do not grant any rights elsewhere.

   Scott Bradner claims [14] that section 7.1 give you these rights.
   However, the entire section 7 is titled:

           Exposition of why these procedures are the way they are

   We believe section 7.1 can thus not be reasonable said to be included
   in the actual license statement.  Rather, it is only part of the
   considerations that went into the process that ended up with the
   current license statement.

   Another argument that were put forward was that the note
   "distribution of this memo is unlimited" in RFCs give third parties
   the necessary rights.  However, there is no requirement for that text
   in RFCs, and it also appear unclear why the RFC Editor still add this
   text [14].

   This problem was acknowledged through changes between version 00 and
   version 01 of [13]; changes that, at least partially, address this
   concern.  The revised section below address this concern.


4.  Revised Section 3.3

   This memo add the following as paragraph 3.3(c) of RFC 3978:


       c.  The Contributor grants third parties the right to copy and
           distribute the Contribution, with or without modification, in
           any medium, without royalty.  The IETF requests that any
           citation or excerpt of unmodified text reference the RFC or
           other document from which the text is derived. If the text is
           modified in any way other than translation, any claim of
           endorsement by the IETF or status within its document series
           must be removed.



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5.  Alternative

   The reader should be aware that another BCP 78 Update proposal has
   been published [13].  The change from version 00 and version 01 of
   that document was to discuss our second problem, i.e., that third
   parties have no rights to distribute copies of RFCs.  However, it
   does not discuss nor address our first problem.


6.  Acknowledgments

   The author acknowledge contributions from: Ted Hardie, Branden
   Robinson, Florian Weimer.


7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

   [1]  Bradner, S., "IETF Rights in Contributions", BCP 78, RFC 3978,
        March 2005.

7.2.  Informative References

   [2]   Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3",
         BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.

   [3]   Myers, J., "Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)",
         RFC 2222, October 1997.

   [4]   Wray, J., "Generic Security Service API Version 2 :
         C-bindings", RFC 2744, January 2000.

   [5]   Kabat, J. and M. Upadhyay, "Generic Security Service API
         Version 2 : Java Bindings", RFC 2853, June 2000.

   [6]   Eastlake, D. and P. Jones, "US Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA1)",
         RFC 3174, September 2001.

   [7]   Stone, J., Stewart, R., and D. Otis, "Stream Control
         Transmission Protocol (SCTP) Checksum Change", RFC 3309,
         September 2002.

   [8]   Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Preparation of Internationalized
         Strings ("stringprep")", RFC 3454, December 2002.

   [9]   Costello, A., "Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for
         Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)",



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         RFC 3492, March 2003.

   [10]  Gilligan, R., Thomson, S., Bound, J., McCann, J., and W.
         Stevens, "Basic Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6",
         RFC 3493, February 2003.

   [11]  Thaler, D., Fenner, B., and B. Quinn, "Socket Interface
         Extensions for Multicast Source Filters", RFC 3678,
         January 2004.

   [12]  Neuman, C., Yu, T., Hartman, S., and K. Raeburn, "The Kerberos
         Network Authentication Service (V5)", RFC 4120, July 2005.

   [13]  Bradner, S., "RFC 3978 Update", draft-ietf-ipr-rules-update-01
         (work in progress), October 2005.

   [14]  Bradner, S., "Post to IPR WG mailing list",
         WWW http://article.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.ipr/2790.

   [15]  Microsoft, "Microsoft Licenses",
         WWW http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/default.mspx.

   [16]  Apple, "Apple Licenses", WWW http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/.

   [17]  MIT, "MIT Licenses",
         WWW http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html.

   [18]  FSF, "GNU Licenses",
         WWW http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html.

   [19]  Debian, "Debian Social Contract: Free Software Guidelines",
         WWW http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines.



















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Author's Address

   Simon Josefsson

   Email: simon@josefsson.org














































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Intellectual Property Statement

   The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
   Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
   pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
   this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
   might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
   made any independent effort to identify any such rights.  Information
   on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
   found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
   assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
   attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
   such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
   specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
   http://www.ietf.org/ipr.

   The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
   copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
   rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
   this standard.  Please address the information to the IETF at
   ietf-ipr@ietf.org.


Disclaimer of Validity

   This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
   "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
   OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
   ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
   INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
   INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
   WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


Copyright Statement

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).  This document is subject
   to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and
   except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.


Acknowledgment

   Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
   Internet Society.




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