Re: RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
Material comments: - Section 3: RFC 5378 expected the date on which 5378 was effective to be set by the Trust (section 2.1), and explicitly did not want to cast into RFC stone the procedure by which the changeover date was determined. - I disagree with the decision to allow *all* of a submission, including new text, to be 3978-boilerplated. As I've said before, my preferred resolution mechanism is to have a mechanism available (probably front-page disclaimer + details in the Contributors section) for listing pre-5378 sources from which material was copied without 5378 permission being granted by the authors. I believe the continued production of material that is licensed under 3978 only will be long-term harmful to the state of the IETF's IPR confusion. Harald John C Klensin wrote: Hi. I've just reposted this draft as draft-klensin-rfc5378var-01.txt. I didn't removing the material I indicated I was going to remove because this version follows too quickly on the previous one. There are only two sets of changes, but the first seemed sufficiently important to be worth a quick update: (1) Alfred Hoenes caught several places in which I had transposed digits or otherwise fouled up RFC numbers to which I was making reference. This type of work is sufficiently confusing without that sort of stupid problem, for which I apologize -- I thought I had proofread it carefully enough but obviously did not. They have been fixed. (2) I realized that it was necessary for completeness to un-obsolete 3948 and 4748 if they were going to be referenced, or material from them picked up and copied into, documents, so I have inserted a paragraph to take care of that. Anyone who has successful read the -00 version and understood it can safely ignore this one. Anyone who has not yet read -00, or who tried to read it and was confused by the numbering errors, may find this version more helpful. Comments are, of course, welcome on either one. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
(in the interest of efficiency, I'm going to respond to Harald's and Simon's comments in a single note and pick up one of Hector's remarks in the process) Harald, --On Tuesday, 16 December, 2008 09:53 +0100 Harald Alvestrand har...@alvestrand.no wrote: Material comments: - Section 3: RFC 5378 expected the date on which 5378 was effective to be set by the Trust (section 2.1), and explicitly did not want to cast into RFC stone the procedure by which the changeover date was determined. I understand that. I even believe that the WG decision in that regard, reflected in 5378, was correct in that regard. But we have ended up in a situation in which reasonable people, apparently even practicing attorney-type reasonable people, disagree on the actual effective changeover date and its validity. Except as an example of we don't do this at all well (see below), why that happened is not particularly interesting compared to the importance of properly identifying and solving, or at least working around, the problem. - I disagree with the decision to allow *all* of a submission, including new text, to be 3978-boilerplated. As I've said before, my preferred resolution mechanism is to have a mechanism available (probably front-page disclaimer + details in the Contributors section) for listing pre-5378 sources from which material was copied without 5378 permission being granted by the authors. I believe the continued production of material that is licensed under 3978 only will be long-term harmful to the state of the IETF's IPR confusion. I tried to say this in the document, but obviously not clearly enough. I believe that the right long-term strategy is some sort of hybrid in which earlier text is somehow grandfathered and newer text falls under the newer rules. That is desirable not only for the reason you cite but because, as Simon points out, 3978 has its own set of problems that we should not perpetuate any longer or more than necessary. _However_ there are two problems with a hybrid strategy. The first is that I see almost no chance that we could develop that necessary model, plan, and documentation quickly and get it right (see below). I believe that, if 5378 is taken seriously and is the only permitted posting mode after today, that a number of document and WG efforts are simply going to come to a halt until we get a workaround in place. The just use 3978 until we get this sorted out model of the I-D is a proposal for that (I hope temporary) workaround; it is not a suggestion for a permanent solution. The second is an issue on which I think we need advice from the Trustees and from Counsel and then time to consider and discuss that advice. To a first approximation, the IPR in a document completely created under 5378 rules is extremely easy to understand and administer: the Trust owns the thing and all rights to use it, even for IETF development purposes, derive from licenses granted by the Trust. Similarly, and again to a first approximation, the IPR in the document completely created under 3978 or its predecessors is easy to understand and administer: the IETF can use the document any way it needs/wants to, anyone can copy, distribute, etc., and anyone with another use must seek out the authors for permission. A document that contains both 3978 (or earlier) material and 5378 material is a much more complex proposition. Obviously, the Trust can't grant rights it doesn't have. Probably a grant from the Trust that says you can do X with any part of the document we control, but for anything else you have to have to contact the authors, and we can't tell you which is which is the worst of both worlds... one in which anyone who is being conservative will feel a need to obtain both a license from the Trust _and_ licenses from the authors/ Contributors. Does that mean that, to do a hybrid document, we will have to label each paragraph with its authorship/ 5378 status? I don't know, and that is where consultation with Counsel is needed. One we get those answers, we can start figuring out the tradeoffs and what we _really_ want.But I am certain we won't be able to figure that out and get it right this week, or even this year. Simon, --On Tuesday, 16 December, 2008 15:03 +0100 Simon Josefsson si...@josefsson.org wrote: ... Thanks for trying to do something about this problem. I've read the -01 document. It describes a solution that would be very far from a good copyright situation -- even further away than RFC 5378 alone, given that RFC 3978 is seriously flawed in some ways. However, I think your draft is likely to be one of few approaches that can gain consensus quickly enough to be an effective solution to the problem you describe. It could be a stop-gap measure for the next year or so, until better copyright policies can be developed. That is really all I intend -- something that can get us out of this hole, that could be adopted and implemented
Re: RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
Cullen Jennings flu...@cisco.com writes: I believe it would allow us to continue work where the text had been provided under the 3978 rules. Without something like this, I don't know how I can submit new versions of the WG internet drafts that I am an co-author of. I can not even figure out who are all the people that contributed significant text to the WG drafts much less imagine how I will get permission from all of them to submit the draft under the the 5378 rules. Question. It is my understanding/assumption that the ONLY parties that one must clearance from are the actual listed authors of the document. Specifically, one does NOT need to go back to everyone who might have contributed text. That, at least, is how we seem to have been operating for a long time, i.e, it is only the listed authors that matter. Having said that, things might be murkier than that if one looks at an acknowledgment section to find everyone who might have contributed significant text. I.e., when incorporating comments from individuals in WGs, those contributions are covered by the NOTE WELL. Does the NOTE WELL also need to be extended to cover the expanded rights case? Please say no! Thomas ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
Hi. In an attempt to get this discussion unstuck and to provide a way forward for those of us whose reading of 5378 (or advice from counsel) have convinced us that we cannot post most documents that contain older text written by others under the new rules, I've posted a new I-D, draft-klensin-rfc5378var-00.txt. It would be very helpful if people would actually read the draft before commenting on it -- it isn't very long, and the key section that contains the new procedure (Section 4) is under 40 lines of text -- but the intent is to make sure we don't get stuck or that we get unstuck as quickly as possible. While the draft reviews the history and context of the situation, the elevator summary of the proposal is that, if an author/ contributor is working on a document that contains old text and concludes that he or she cannot reasonably comply with the provisions of 5378, then it is permitted to post the document with IPR rules that are strictly in conformance with RFC 3978. In deference to the ever-patient and underappreciated maintainers of tools, I note that this would require no changes other than disabling (or later un-enabling) the 5378-only check that I assume the Secretariat is going to turn on tomorrow. A different possibility would be to create an exception procedure in which such an author would have to request an exemption from the IESG or the Trustees (or for the IESG to conclude that the variance procedure of RFC 2026 could be used for these cases). My personal opinion is that those approaches would add to the workload of people who are already too busy and further bog us down. This draft is not intended as a long term solution. Long-term, I think we will need to revise 5378 to make explicit provision for new documents that contain older material for which having the IETF Trust obtain additional rights is not feasible. The draft discusses that situation further. But I don't believe that we should even attempt to make that sort of change quickly, especially since I am very sensitive to Simon's comment from earlier today that I would generalize as every time a new issue comes up, we respond by making things more complex and harder to understand and work with. So, in the short term, I hope this document will either provide a basis for the new BCP that Russ indicated that the Trustees need or at least can focus enough discussion that someone else can generate such a BCP draft. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
John, I like the draft. It looks like a fairly pragmatic approach to solve the problem. I believe it would allow us to continue work where the text had been provided under the 3978 rules. Without something like this, I don't know how I can submit new versions of the WG internet drafts that I am an co-author of. I can not even figure out who are all the people that contributed significant text to the WG drafts much less imagine how I will get permission from all of them to submit the draft under the the 5378 rules. Cullen On Dec 15, 2008, at 1:27 PM, John C Klensin wrote: Hi. In an attempt to get this discussion unstuck and to provide a way forward for those of us whose reading of 5378 (or advice from counsel) have convinced us that we cannot post most documents that contain older text written by others under the new rules, I've posted a new I-D, draft-klensin-rfc5378var-00.txt. It would be very helpful if people would actually read the draft before commenting on it -- it isn't very long, and the key section that contains the new procedure (Section 4) is under 40 lines of text -- but the intent is to make sure we don't get stuck or that we get unstuck as quickly as possible. While the draft reviews the history and context of the situation, the elevator summary of the proposal is that, if an author/ contributor is working on a document that contains old text and concludes that he or she cannot reasonably comply with the provisions of 5378, then it is permitted to post the document with IPR rules that are strictly in conformance with RFC 3978. In deference to the ever-patient and underappreciated maintainers of tools, I note that this would require no changes other than disabling (or later un-enabling) the 5378-only check that I assume the Secretariat is going to turn on tomorrow. A different possibility would be to create an exception procedure in which such an author would have to request an exemption from the IESG or the Trustees (or for the IESG to conclude that the variance procedure of RFC 2026 could be used for these cases). My personal opinion is that those approaches would add to the workload of people who are already too busy and further bog us down. This draft is not intended as a long term solution. Long-term, I think we will need to revise 5378 to make explicit provision for new documents that contain older material for which having the IETF Trust obtain additional rights is not feasible. The draft discusses that situation further. But I don't believe that we should even attempt to make that sort of change quickly, especially since I am very sensitive to Simon's comment from earlier today that I would generalize as every time a new issue comes up, we respond by making things more complex and harder to understand and work with. So, in the short term, I hope this document will either provide a basis for the new BCP that Russ indicated that the Trustees need or at least can focus enough discussion that someone else can generate such a BCP draft. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
Hi. I've just reposted this draft as draft-klensin-rfc5378var-01.txt. I didn't removing the material I indicated I was going to remove because this version follows too quickly on the previous one. There are only two sets of changes, but the first seemed sufficiently important to be worth a quick update: (1) Alfred Hoenes caught several places in which I had transposed digits or otherwise fouled up RFC numbers to which I was making reference. This type of work is sufficiently confusing without that sort of stupid problem, for which I apologize -- I thought I had proofread it carefully enough but obviously did not. They have been fixed. (2) I realized that it was necessary for completeness to un-obsolete 3948 and 4748 if they were going to be referenced, or material from them picked up and copied into, documents, so I have inserted a paragraph to take care of that. Anyone who has successful read the -00 version and understood it can safely ignore this one. Anyone who has not yet read -00, or who tried to read it and was confused by the numbering errors, may find this version more helpful. Comments are, of course, welcome on either one. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
