Re: RFC 5378 "contributions"

[Marshall Eubanks <tme at multicasttech.com>]

On Jan 15, 2009, at 7:23 PM, Theodore Tso wrote:

> 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?

You are absolutely correct here IMO. This is a different threat model,  
and
it seems to me that care has to be taken that no code is published  
open source post 5378 that
is not cleared. Possible solutions to this due diligence problem might  
include

- an automatic search of the RFC archive to see if code being published
is present in an earlier incarnation.

- the ability to _quote_ code from earlier text with a note saying  
that it might be not open source if it
is from an earlier RFC (would this require a 5378bis ?).

This raises a question. The IETF publishes relatively little code  
compared to the millions of
lines of open source code out there. How do the large open source  
projects protect and
indemnify themselves and their participants in case someone takes some  
code they don't own,
post it to a CVS, and it winds up in (say) the Linux kernel ?

Regards
Marshall


> > 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" <tytso at mit.edu>
>
> 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 <aneesh.kumar at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
> 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 <aneesh.kumar at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
>    Signed-off-by: Mingming Cao <cmm at us.ibm.com>
>    Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso at mit.edu>
>
> 						- Ted

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