Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary

["Joel M. Halpern" <jmh at joelhalpern.com>]

Let us be quite clear.  The question of rights in pre-existing material 
is not a new question.  It is inherent in any effort to increase the 
rights granted to the trust.  While I can not assert what members of the 
WG or the community at last call understood, there is actually text in 
RFC 5377 that talks about the fact that there is a need to acquire 
suitable rights to older material.

Given that the VAST majority of IETF work is work on existing documents, 
and given that authors and author's companies change frequently, if we 
do not insist that all work be under the new rules we will have 
essentially failed to increase the rights grant.  As such, folks who use 
our material will not be able to make use of it in all the ways we intend.

Hence, my personal conclusion is that for the trust to have arrived any 
any enforcement policy other than the one they did would have seemed to 
me to be a case of the trust contravening the stated intention of the 
IETF, as captured in the RFCs.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

PS: TO be quite clear, the question of whether the enforcement date is 
December 12 2008, February 29, 2009, or April 1, 2009 is not a matter of 
meeting the IETF stated policy, but rather a question of the best way to 
meet that.  The only reason I am not more concerned by the date is the 
fact that as a practical matter the bulk of I-D authors will actually 
have until late February to get the rights sorted out.

Simon Josefsson wrote:
> Marshall Eubanks <tme at multicasttech.com> writes:
>
> > While this has been argued to death
>
> I disagree.  The issue was raised only few weeks ago, and this e-mail
> thread is (as far as I have seen) the first where the problem has bee
> re-stated in an e-mail to any public IETF list.
>
> > Contributors of IETF material should represent that one or more of 3
> > conditions apply to any particular contribution:
> >
> > 1.) There is no material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work.
> >
> > 2.) There is material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work by
> > one or more of the
> > current set of authors, and they hereby license this older material
> > under the current conditions.
> >
> > 3.) There is material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work and
> > the license status of that material may not be consistent with
> > RFC5378.
>
> I like this.
>
> > Number 3 is for the cases where the previous authors were different,
> > or where the current authors do not own their previous work, and is in
> > either case intended to flag the contribution as
> > possibly one needing attention by the Trust.
>
> For # 3 it means that the Trust cannot sub-license it without contacting
> the original contributors.  For all IETF internal purposes, there
> shouldn't be any problem.
>
> > Note that # 2 and #3 are not mutually exclusive, and obviously the
> > Trust Counsel would need to pass any actual wording.
>
> I believe even # 2 may need consideration by the trust, in case the
> pre-RFC5378 work contain copyrightable material written by others.
>
> > This would shift any work to obtain earlier licenses onto the Trust
> > and the Trust Counsel, where in my opinion it belongs. This would also
> > serve the useful purpose of automatically obtaining licenses from
> > people who are just reusing their own work (if they are in a position
> > to grant such a license).
>
> Indeed.
>
> /Simon
>
> > Regards
> > Marshall
> >
> > > Any what if the contributor is deceased?
> > >
> > > It would be very useful if the IAOC/Trust develop, together with legal
> > > aid, guiding instructions for this situation.  It would answer the
> > > common questions.  It seems applicable to a lot of work that will
> > > happen
> > > in the next 5 years: updating any RFC issues prior to RFC 5378.
> > >
> > > /Simon
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
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