Re: IETF and open source license compatibility (Was: Re: yet another comment on draft-housley-tls-authz-extns-07.txt)

[Margaret Wasserman <[e-mail]>]

Hi Tony,

On Feb 12, 2009, at 7:45 AM, Tony Finch wrote:

> On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, Jari Arkko wrote:
>>
>> I agree that there are problematic case, but I believe I hope  
>> everyone
>> realizes this is only the case if the RFC in question has code.
>> Otherwise it really does not matter. Only some RFCs have code.
>
> Except that it prevents using the text of an RFC as comments in an
> implementation.

Ummm, no it doesn't...

There are two reasons why I don't believe that this statement could be  
true of RFC text with the either the old or new copyright template:

(1) No copyright actively _prevents_ anyone from doing anything.  You  
may or may not have a license to do something with copyrighted text,  
and if you copy the text without a license, there may be  
consequences.  However, I don't think that anyone actually believes  
that the IETF will track down people who copy RFC text into comments  
and sue them or attempt to get injunctions against them.

(2) Even if the IETF did try to sue you for copying sections of RFC  
text into your source code comments, they'd almost certainly lose, as  
that would probably fall under fair use provisions.

Realistically, the only way you will run into any sort of trouble is  
if you re-publish RFCs, or reuse large sections of RFC text in another  
publication and don't follow the licensing requirements.

Margaret