Proposed license for IETF Contributions

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Simon Josefsson
>Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 9:28 AM
>To: Ted Mittelstaedt
>Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>Subject: Re: Proposed license for IETF Contributions
>
>
>"Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm at toybox.placo.com> writes:
>
>> Hi Simon,
>>
>>   You might check this but I believe that the Copyright convention
>> specifically
>> excepts "specifications" from copyright coverage.  I think
>there's some
>> other
>> classes of original work that fall under this.  How about simply
>> rewriting the
>> ITEF license to designate any RFC as the complete RFC is a
>specification,
>> and therefore uncopyrightable.
>
>Hi Ted.  I have not seen anyone suggest this before, and I strongly
>doubt that anything as complex as a specification would be excepted
>from copyright coverage.

You are wrong.

>
>Please provide me with a reference for this.
>


http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wnp

Under the subheading:

WHAT IS NOT PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT?

"Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and
containing no original authorship"

In short, all you have to do is have the author of whatever IETF standard
simply declare
his ENTIRE standard description as common property, and instantly it's
not copyrightable,
thus you now have no issue.

I think what your trying to do is retain copyright on the work with IETF
which I think
is the wrong thing to do.  Your just asking for trouble.  Witness what is
going on
with Microsoft trying to get ISO to standardize it's office document
format.

Ted