Proposed license for IETF Contributions

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Simon Josefsson [mailto:jas at extundo.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 7:29 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:
>
>>>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"
>
>It continues:
>
>   (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape
>   measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public
>   documents or other common sources)
>
>IETF documents are more technical than that, and they are usually the
>first instance in history where that precise technical invention is
>described.  That material does not qualify as common property.
>

Duh, that's why the preamble of the material must specifiy it's
common property.

>> 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.
>
>Except that I believe some IETF authors would not agree to putting
>their work into the public domain.

That is the central value of IETF standards.  If the IETF standard is
patented
or copyrighted and the author retains the copyright then nobody can
use it without the fear that the copyright holder might someday levy
license
fees, or withdraw his or her copyrighted material from the IETF
standards.

> I'm trying to create a license
>that I believe would be acceptable to IETF contributors, and make it
>aligned with BSD/GPL licenses.
>

If it is aligned with BSD/GPL then it is effectively in the public
domain,
with the exception that since copyright on it still exists, a court could
someday make a ruling that would effect that.

The legal status of "public domain" or "common property" has already
been established.  The legal status of stuff like GPL's viral licensing
has not been established.  BSD licensing is a bit more firmly established
but keep in mind the actual BSD license gives copyright rights to the
Regents of the University of California, Berkeley, NOT to the author
(like the GPL does) so ultimately it's no different than any other
copyright
except that there's a gentlemen's agreement that UCB is never going
to modify the copyright's licensing terms to be other than free.

If you write a license that does not address who owns copyright, but
tries to force the material under it to be open, you have created a
GPL-style license.  The problem with this is that the original owner
and his heirs still hold copyright on the material and at some point
could decide to withdraw their copyright from the GPL-licensed
materials, at that point they might be able to get a court to invalidate
the GPL-style-licensed material that is out there.

If you write a license that makes copyright rights be held by IETF then
you have created a BSD-style license.  In that case the community is
dependent on the IETF continuing to be a good copyright steward
(as long as the copyright rights exist) just as the community is
dependent on UCB being a good copyright steward.

If you write a license that declares the material in the IETF standard
to be public domain, then it now becomes uncopyrightable, and
no matter what the IETF or original authors may decide to do in the
future, none of them can impose licensing fees.

Simon, the entire reason this whole thing is becoming a problem now
is that for years and years, the accepted practice in the industry was
when a company wrote an IETF standard, it was generally understood
that that standard was in the public domain, and that anyone could use
it without having to pay licensing fees.

Then a few years ago when IETF standards suddenly became very
important, companies looked at them and realized that under the
copyright laws, since the company (like Microsoft or Cisco or whoever)
held copyright, that they could impose licensing fees or restrictions
on use of the IETF standard.

The IETF is knee-jerking a response here (assuming you yourself are
affiliated with them in any way, and not just blowing air out your ass
for an interesting discussion) by trying to be all things to all people,
you
want to appease companies that look on their standards efforts as
potential future sources of revenue (or future ways to control the
market)
and get them to put their stuff into an RFC, and you want to appease the
users of the RFC standards and assure them that yes, the IETF
standards process will protect them from the big bad companies that
are either trying to get money out of them or otherwise control them.

What you don't understand is you can't do this.  The goals are
incompatible.  IETF standards users cannot tolerate a scrap of
interference
from the copyright holder of an RFC, whether that be Cisco or IETF
itself.  If I take an RFC standard and implement it, I will not do it
if I have a fear that the author of the standard may come to me in
the future and demand licensing fees, or demand that I modify
my implementation because it's not in their view compliant.  This
requirement is fundamentally incompatible with anything other than
public domain or common property.  IETF needs to recognize this
and quite trying to appease people like Sun and Microsoft.

Ted