Re: IETF and open source license compatibility

I disagree Simon.

Free Software authors (for any variety of free software I know of) are 
free to submit I-Ds describing protocols that they define.

They can not take their licensed code, with license restrictions, and 
put it in the RFC.
The primary reason for this restriction, in my view, is that some of the 
licenses out there would actually interfere with commercial 
implementations of the RFC if such double-licensing were allowed and 
done.  And just as we want to allow free implementations of the RFCs, we 
also want to allow commercial implementations of RFCs, for a wide range 
of commercial goals (just as there are a wide range of free rules and 
goals.)
Preventing folks from putting code with non-IETF licenses into RFCs 
allows everyone to write RFCs, and allows a wide range of code to be 
included in RFCs.  Making sure that code which is included in RFCs can 
be used by any implementator, as they need to, is important and useful. 
  Extra licenses distinctly interfere with that.
(We do permit references to licensed code in our documents, including 
specific URLs.)

And having a restriction that folks can not take and modify large blocks 
of text from the RFC does not prevent them from either writing RFCs or 
implementing protocols defined in RFCs.

Yours,
Joel

Simon Josefsson wrote:
> Jari Arkko <jari.arkko@piuha.net> writes:
> 
>> Simon,
>>
>>>>> That's not possible because the IETF policies does not permit free
>>>>> software compatible licensing on Internet drafts published by the IETF.
>>>>>       
>> ...
>>> See RFC 5378:
>>>
>>>    It is also important to note that additional copyright notices are
>>>    not permitted in IETF Documents except ...
>> ...
>>> The IETF copying conditions are not compatible with free software
>>> licenses (modification is not allowed), and additional copyright notices
>>> are not permitted.  The vast majority of free software licenses is built
>>> on the concept of copyright notices and requires preserving the
>>> copyright notice.
>>>   
>> 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.
> 
> I don't realize that, and completely disagree.  If you want free
> software authors to publish free standards (as in free software
> compatible) in the IETF, the IETF needs to allow free software
> compatible licensing of their work.  Right now, the IETF disallow
> standards published through the IETF to be licensed under a free
> software compatible license.  The only alternative for these authors is
> to release their work outside of the IETF.  This may result in some free
> software authors doesn't bother publishing their work in the IETF
> because the licensing models are incompatible.
> 
>> I support experiments in this space, though. And it would be really
>> good to get more of the open source folk participate in IETF
>> specification work. There are many important open source extensions
>> and protocols that fit in IETF's scope but were never documented. Even
>> if source code is freely available, you could have several
>> implementations, commercial vs. open source interoperability issues,
>> etc.
> 
> I agree.
> 
> /Simon
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