I asked a lawyer to review the -outgoing document, and the following
text in Section 6.3 turned up a concern:
As such, the rough consensus is that the IETF trust is to grant
rights such that code components of IETF contributions can be
extracted, modified, and used by anyone in any way desired.
The concern is that the software licensing implications of that
text are not clear to someone who has not been following our
discussions and hence the text could be *misread* as permitting or
encouraging the use of licenses with copyleft (aka viral or
share-alike) and/or patent license provisions.
While it should be the case that code in IETF RFCs can be placed
under almost any software license, (including those with copyleft
and patent license provisions), the IETF Trust should not be doing
so on its own initiative.
Hence, in the outbound document, I think it would be good to add
a statement that the IETF Trust should avoid adding software license
obligations beyond those already present in a contribution, and noting
that both copyleft and patent license provisions in software licenses
depart from the goal of "extracted, modified and used by anyone in
any way desired," but also noting that the ability to place extracted
code under such licenses is an important aspect of "use in any
way desired."
This also impacts the inbound document, but that'll be a separate
thread.
Thanks,
--David
----------------------------------------------------
David L. Black, Senior Technologist
EMC Corporation, 176 South St., Hopkinton, MA 01748
+1 (508) 293-7953 FAX: +1 (508) 293-7786
black_david at emc.com Mobile: +1 (978) 394-7754
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