Re: Comment on section 2.3 of draft-ietf-ipr-rules-update-01

[Simon Josefsson <jas at extundo.com>]

John C Klensin <john-ietf at jck.com> writes:

>> Frankly, we could probably eliminate the boilerplate and
>> simply rely on the license grants, but I guess it doesn't hurt
>> to
>> include it for clarity.
>
> Actually, I continue to believe that our tendency toward ever more
> boilerplate is harmful.  It makes trivial documents longer and,
> because it is boilerplate, changes from one document to another are
> very hard to spot and often go unseen.  We would be far better to a
> pointer to licenses, etc., that have the property that, if the
> external material changes, the pointers change in a way that makes
> that clear.

I agree with John here.  People have been mistaken the boiler plate as
the license for too long.  That misconception appeared here as well, I
recall that it was argued that the boiler plate ("distribution of this
memo is unlimited") gave third parties any rights.  That is not the
case, and has never been the case, as far as I can understand.

Removing the boiler plate and including the actual license text is
better.  Pointing to the license text is problematic, as is currently
done, because the license may then be revised to retract rights
granted earlier.  That is why I believe it is important to add the
word "perpetual" to copying conditions.

Regards,
Simon

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