Re: IETF Last Call for two IPR WG Dcouments

Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman@vpnc.org> writes:

> At 11:15 AM +0200 3/30/08, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>>If the trust uses a software license for code that doesn't meet the
>>requirements in, say, the DFSG, would you consider that a failure?  If
>>that happens, Debian cannot include such code.
>
> At 11:25 AM +0200 3/30/08, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>>There are examples of projects with good intentions that want to give
>>everyone the right to use code they publish in any way to end up with
>>copying conditions that prevent some subset of the community from using
>>the software.
>>
>>Look at the mailing list archive of debian-legal.  Most of the software
>>licenses that are reviewed there have been written by organizations that
>>wants open source-friendly distribution of their code, but happens to
>>make one mistake or the other.
>
> These are interesting points, but maybe not interesting in the way 
> you intended. If some large group (in this example, the Debian folks) 
> want to have some restriction on what they can use in their software, 
> that's fine. But that doesn't mean that the IETF needs to do anything 
> beyond what it wants to do in order to cater to that group's current 
> desires. Every such group could act just like the IETF does: look 
> around at what the problems it is facing and change the way it acts 
> based on an analysis of the problems.

We disagree here.  I believe the IETF has a responsibility to chose a
license that works well for a large majority of Internet users.  To some
extents, the IETF needs to cater for organizations that make up parts of
the Internet.

> It is the responsibility of the IETF Trust to consider what its 
> actions would be for the whole world. These distributions are 
> important. So is CiscoIBMMicrosoftEtc. So is 
> TeenyStartupNascentISPEtc.

We agree here, but if you believe this, I don't follow your first
paragraph.

>>If people involved in free software licensing have trouble getting this
>>right, I have little confidence that people not involved in the free
>>software licensing will get the right.
>
> Fully agree. And this is an indication that the FOSS folks have equal 
> responsibility for the problem you describe.

Definitely.  But that doesn't make the problem smaller.

>>Providing them with some
>>mechanism to test their proposed license against (i.e., the
>>OSD/FSD/DFSG) will help to avoid at least the most basic mistakes.
>
> Fully agree. Offer to help the IETF Trust with this; I suspect that 
> CiscoIBMMicrosoftEtc will.

I have sent a note to Ray and Kurtis about offering to help the Trust
chose a suitable software license.

> That's different that forcing a requirement into the spec.

I disagree completely with the notion that the spec doesn't have to be
sufficiently clear to allow the Trust to work out a license on its own.

/Simon
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