Re: Editors vs Authors vs Contributors, was: ANNOUNCEMENT: The IETF Trustees invite your review and comments on a proposed Work-Around to the Pre-5378 Problem

Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com> writes:

> Simon,
>
> My recollection, without doing an archive search, is that our counsel
> took the opposite view, i.e. that the parenthesis expanded the scope
> beyond "ISOC and the IETF". IANAL and YMMV.

Ah, I didn't recall the IETF counsel had made that analysis.  When the
FSF's license team reviewed the same license text, they came to the
conclusion that it didn't grant sufficient rights for third parties.
Others are free to make their own analysis of the RFC 3978 license, of
course, but I think this shows that there are different ways to
interpret it.  Thus, Ted's original dilemma is still present.

This is a parenthesis to the bigger discussion, and I think I have said
enough on this point now.

Thanks,
Simon

>     Brian
>
> On 2009-01-23 23:20, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>>> Ted,
>>>
>>> On 2009-01-23 10:30, Theodore Tso wrote:
>>> ...
>>>> Ultimately, I suspect the list of contributors is a good and polite
>>>> thing to do out of courtesy, but it's not all that useful from an IPR
>>>> point of view.  Even if there was code that you wanted to use from a
>>>> pre-RFC5378 text, you wouldn't need or want to contact *all* the
>>>> contributors; you would want to know who contributed the portion of
>>>> the RFC containing the code that you wanted to use in an
>>>> implementation (either proprietary or open source).
>>> To be clear about the case of code: the right to use code was already
>>> granted under the old rules; it's the right to use non-code text in
>>> non-IETF derivative works that is made possible by the new rules.
>>>
>>> RFC3978 and RFC3667 include:
>>>       "(E) to extract, copy, publish, display, distribute, modify and
>>>           incorporate into other works, for any purpose (and not limited
>>>           to use within the IETF Standards Process) any executable code
>>>           or code fragments that are included in any IETF Document..."
>> 
>> Those right are not granted to "third parties", only to the ISOC/IETF.
>> The section before the paragraph you quote from RFC 3978 begins with:
>> 
>>    a. To the extent that a Contribution or any portion thereof is
>>       protected by copyright and other rights of authorship, the
>>       Contributor, and each named co-Contributor, and the organization
>>       he or she represents or is sponsored by (if any) grant a
>>       perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide
>>       right and license to the ISOC and the IETF under all intellectual
>>                 --------------------------------
>>       property rights in the Contribution:
>> 
>> So I disagree that the right to use code was already granted under RFC
>> 3978.  In fact, I believe this was one of the main flaws with RFC 3978.
>> 
>> /Simon
>> 
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