Network Working Group S. Josefsson Internet-Draft October 11, 2005 Updates: 3978 (if approved) Expires: April 14, 2006 RFC 3978 Update draft-josefsson-ipr-rules-update-00 Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on April 14, 2006. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). Abstract Two problems with BCP78 are identified, and a proposal to solve them is proposed. The first problem is that rights to Contributions (to copy, distribute, etc) are not granted to third parties. The second problem is that the rights that were supposedly intended to be granted to third parties are too limited for some uses of Contributions. The uses include incorporating portions of Contributions into online help, reference manuals, source code comments or even into source code itself. Josefsson Expires April 14, 2006 [Page 1] Internet-Draft RFC 3978 Update October 2005 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Problem #1: No Rights Are Granted To Third Parties . . . . . . 3 3. Problem #2: No Rights To Use Modified Parts Of Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. Proposed Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 5. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 7 Josefsson Expires April 14, 2006 [Page 2] Internet-Draft RFC 3978 Update October 2005 1. Introduction This document discuss two problems with BCP78. Familiarity with that document is assumed. In particular, several terms defined in that document are used below. After describing the problems, we conclude by proposing a solution. The reader should be aware that another BCP78 Update proposal has been published [6]. From what we can tell, that document do not address the problems discussed in this document. That document do modify some other unrelated matters, which we have no objections to. It is thus expected that these two documents may eventually be merged, depending on the discussion and outcome of working group discussions. 2. Problem #1: No Rights Are Granted To Third Parties Traditionally, third parties have been permitted to copy and distribute Contributions. BCP78 [1] do not include any license statement to permit this. The rights granted to Contributions, in section 3.3 of BCP78, begin with (emphasis mine): a. To the extent that a Contribution or any portion thereof is protected by copyright and other rights of authorship, the Contributor, and each named co-Contributor, and the organization he or she represents or is sponsored by (if any) grant a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty- free, world-wide right and license to the ISOC and the IETF ------------------------ under all intellectual property rights in the Contribution: That means the all the rights given in that section are given to the IETF and the ISOC, but not to third parties. Similar wording occur in section 4.2 on rights granted for RFC Editor contributions. Scott Bradner claims [7] that section 7.1 give you these rights. However, the entire section 7 is titled: Exposition of why these procedures are the way they are We believe section 7.1 can thus not be reasonable said to be included in the actual license statement. Rather, it is only part of the considerations that went into the process that ended up with the current license statement. Josefsson Expires April 14, 2006 [Page 3] Internet-Draft RFC 3978 Update October 2005 Another argument that were put forward was that the note "distribution of this memo is unlimited" in RFCs give third parties the necessary rights. However, there is no requirement for that text in RFCs, and it also appear unclear why the RFC Editor still add this text [7]. 3. Problem #2: No Rights To Use Modified Parts Of Contributions Implementation of IETF documents may want to reproduce part of the RFC in its online help, reference manual, source code comments or even in source code. Material used in source code may include large tables (see StringPrep [4]) or ASN.1 schemas (see Kerberos 5 [5]). Material used in manuals may include protocol overviews (such as in SASL [2]) or API function documentation (such as in GSS-AP [3]). Currently, there are no rights granted to allow this usage. Further, when deciding on which license grants that should be used, to be able to be integrated in common free and open source projects, the license should be compatible with free software licenses (e.g., the GNU Generic Public License and the GNU Free Documentation License [8]) and free software guidelines [9]. 4. Proposed Update This memo add the following as paragraph 3.3(c) of RFC 3978: c. The Contributor grants third parties the right to copy and distribute the Contribution, with or without modification, in any medium, without royalty, provided that the copyright notice and this notice are preserved, and that any claims of being the authoritative RFC are removed. 5. Acknowledgments TBA 6. References 6.1. Normative References [1] Bradner, S., "IETF Rights in Contributions", BCP 78, RFC 3978, March 2005. Josefsson Expires April 14, 2006 [Page 4] Internet-Draft RFC 3978 Update October 2005 6.2. Informative References [2] Myers, J., "Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)", RFC 2222, October 1997. [3] Wray, J., "Generic Security Service API Version 2 : C-bindings", RFC 2744, January 2000. [4] Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Preparation of Internationalized Strings ("stringprep")", RFC 3454, December 2002. [5] Neuman, C., Yu, T., Hartman, S., and K. Raeburn, "The Kerberos Network Authentication Service (V5)", RFC 4120, July 2005. [6] Bradner, S., "RFC 3978 Update", draft-ietf-ipr-rules-update-00 (work in progress), October 2005. [7] Bradner, S., "Post to IPR WG mailing list", WWW http://article.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.ipr/2790. [8] FSF, "GNU Licenses", WWW http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html. [9] Debian, "Debian Social Contract: Free Software Guidelines", WWW http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines. Josefsson Expires April 14, 2006 [Page 5] Internet-Draft RFC 3978 Update October 2005 Author's Address Simon Josefsson Email: simon@josefsson.org Josefsson Expires April 14, 2006 [Page 6] Internet-Draft RFC 3978 Update October 2005 Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr. The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-ipr@ietf.org. Disclaimer of Validity This document and the information contained herein are provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights. Acknowledgment Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Josefsson Expires April 14, 2006 [Page 7]