Re: IETF and open source license compatibility

[Harald Alvestrand <[e-mail]>]

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