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Re: IETF and open source license compatibility

Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> Thu, 12 February 2009 20:38 UTC

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From: Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>
To: Jari Arkko <jari.arkko@piuha.net>
Subject: Re: IETF and open source license compatibility
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Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:38:44 +0100
In-Reply-To: <49945B7A.60603@piuha.net> (Jari Arkko's message of "Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:25:14 +0200")
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Cc: Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>, ietf@ietf.org
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Jari Arkko <jari.arkko@piuha.net> writes:

> Harald, Margaret, and Simon,
>
> Harald wrote
>> actually that's intended to be permitted by RFC 5377 section 4.2:
>
> and Margaret wrote:
>
>> 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
>
> So it seems that we actually do have at least some ability to deal
> with comment-style use of RFCs fragments in free software. Simon, do
> you see any residual issues that we need to solve, or were your
> concerns in areas other than comments?

The discussion started by Stephan suggesting that free software authors
publish their work as free standards in the IETF.  My point was that
since the IETF disallow publishing standards under a license that is
compatible with free software licensing (e.g., allows modification), it
is not possible for free software authors to do this.  Thus, to me, this
discussion is not related to comments in source code at all.

/Simon

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