Re: RFC 5378 "contributions"

[Theodore Tso <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 11:50:46AM -0500, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
>
> Consider the threat model here.
>
> This threat applies ONLY to material that the Trust licenses to
> third parties (such as, say, the IEEE) for inclusion and
> modification in their standards. (Just reprinting or translating an
> RFC is not at issue.)

So this licensing to third parties is not automatic; which makes sense
in terms of letting the IESG to have a control point before allowing
another standards body to take over a standard (or try to take over a
standard).

However, that presumably wouldn't be tree for allowing text or code to
be used in implementations, open source or otherwise --- I assume
that wouldn't require prior permission first, right?

> If the Trust does NOT license your material to third parties, then there 
> is no infringement, no one with standing to sue, and no risk to authors. 
> It may be necessary for the Trust to state that they will not assume 5378 
> to be in place for this purpose until there is a replacement. (In that 
> case, if the IEEE or some other body wants to take over an RFC and modify 
> it, they will have to get explicit permission from all authors until 
> there is a replacement for 5378 in place, just as they did before 5378 as 
> put into place.) My understanding is that the Trust is responsible for 
> these licenses, and so they could just (in their best judgement) refuse 
> to issue them without further conditions.

So there probably isn't much risk for a standards bodies wanting to
take over a MIB, for example, But what about someone using pseudo-code
from a RFC where the RFC editor is required to make an assertion that
he/she had all of the rights, and the code or pseudo code was
contributed by a third party who copied the code from some Microsoft
source they had access to while they were a graduate student?   

> Or (and this is my opinion), maybe the authors should only warrant  
> _their work_ as being subject to such licenses, and put the burden on  
> the Trust to obtain any necessary approvals from other parties, only  
> alerting the Trust to the extent they know of such prior authorship. My 
> understanding is that this would require a 5378bis.

That I think is the key; each person can only warrant what they
themselves have authored.  Something that might be worth looking at is
the Developer's Certification of Origin, which is how Linux Kernel
developers deal with contributions for the Linux Kernel.  Anything
which gets incoproated into the kernel must have a Signed-off-by, like
this:

Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <[e-mail]>

What this mean is an explicit assertion of the following:

	Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1

	By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:

        (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
            have the right to submit it under the open source license
            indicated in the file; or

        (b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
            of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
            license and I have the right under that license to submit that
            work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
            by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
            permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
            in the file; or

        (c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
            person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
            it.

	(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
	    are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
	    personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
	    maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
	    this project or the open source license(s) involved.

This would obviously have to be modified for the IETF's purpose, but
what's nice about it is that each Linux Kernel Developer is only
making assertions about things which he or she has personally has
control over, and by using the Signed-off-by chain, it's possible to
see the handoffs as the patch was passed up the chain from one
developer to another, i.e:

commit 166348dd37a4baacfb6fe495954b56f56b116f0c
Author: Aneesh Kumar K.V <[e-mail]>
Date:   Mon Sep 8 23:08:40 2008 -0400

    ext4: Don't add the inode to journal handle until after the block is allocated
    
    Make sure we don't add the inode to the journal handle until after the
    block allocation, so that a journal commit will not include the inode in
    case of block allocation failure.
    
    Signed-off-by: Aneesh Kumar K.V <[e-mail]>
    Signed-off-by: Mingming Cao <[e-mail]>
    Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <[e-mail]>

						- Ted
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