Re: The IETF Trust License is too restricted

[Brian E Carpenter <brc at zurich.ibm.com>]

Simon Josefsson wrote:
> "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker at verisign.com> writes:
>
>
> > > From: Brian E Carpenter [mailto:brc at zurich.ibm.com] 
> >
> > > Its purpose is to give the IETF control of its own IPR, which 
> > > has previously been held by 3rd parties. (That's not the 
> > > legal statement of purpose in the formal Trust Agreement.)
> > >
> > > What we then do once we have such control is then something 
> > > we can discuss and reach consensus on. Part of that 
> > > discussion is already happening in the IPR WG.
> >
> > That is an interesting approach.
> >
> > The reason I raised the point was that I suspect that there will be many
> > members of the IETF community who would prefer to have the debate on use
> > before they have surrendered control.
>
>
> I agree.

As I already pointed out, the rights we will get when the Trust
is signed into existence are only the rights that the Settlors
currently have; they will be moving from two bodies over which
the IETF has *no* control (CNRI and ISOC) to a body whose Trustees
are appointed according to RFC 4071. Phill's argument doesn't compute.

> It seems this process is being rushed through before all issues are
> settled or even discussed.

I imagine we'll be discussing IPR issues for the next twenty years
at least. What we are doing *now* is moving some of the IPR into
the IETF's control.

> I'd feel more comfortable if the outbounds right issue was settled,
> before all IPR is signed away to some external body that, to me, it
> seem unclear whether the IETF has total control over.

That is completely wrong. We are moving *some* IPR, not all, from bodies
where the IETF has no control to a body that exists only for the benefit
of the IETF.

> The license text that went out for final review was clearly
> insufficient, and would have made it impossible for the IETF community
> to fix things later on.  The IETF would not have been in control of
> the IPR if that license would have passed.

That isn't a license, it is a Trust Agreement that sets boundary
conditions. The community objected to one of the boundary conditions,
and we fixed it. That was the purpose of the community review.

> I stress this: All past IETF IPR would appear to have been lost and
> out of control for the IETF community if the initial legal document
> had passed.

Absolutely not. That is completely untrue. There was an unintended side
effect on derivative works, and we fixed it. If we hadn't been able to
fix it in the Trust Agreement, we would have found another way to fix it.

> Giving the community 3 additional days to review the revised legal
> document, to identify similar problems, is ridiculous.  (Brian's
> announcement of the updated section 9.5 was posted on December 5th,
> and the deadline extended to December 8th.)

Yes, well, some of us take weekends sometimes. Also, this point was
raised with the IAOC during the Vancouver meeting; we didn't rush
the fix.

> The problem raised and the fix was non-trivial.  The normal procedure
> when that happens for a technical document would have been to have
> another last call.  It may have been wise to follow the RFC 2026
> procedures when attempting to reach consensus on this work.
>
> Please, give the community more time to review this.

Unfortunately, we need to close on these documents before the
holidays. Sometimes, we have to work 'just in time.' I would
have been much happier if we could have exposed the draft
several months earlier, but it just wasn't possible.

    Brian


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