Advice to the Trustees of the IETF
Trust on Rights to Be Granted in IETF Documents
Ericsson
P. O. Box 6049
Leesburg
VA
20178
United States of America
joel.halpern@ericsson.com
General
IASA2
IASA
Trust
Contributors grant intellectual property rights to the IETF. The
IETF Trust holds and manages those rights on behalf of the IETF. The
Trustees of the IETF Trust are responsible for that management. This
management includes granting the licenses to copy, implement, and
otherwise use IETF Contributions, among them Internet-Drafts and RFCs.
The Trustees of the IETF Trust accept direction from the IETF regarding
the rights to be granted. This document describes the desires of the
IETF regarding outbound rights to be granted in IETF
Contributions. This document obsoletes RFC 5377 solely for the
purpose of removing references to the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee
(IAOC), which was part of the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA).
Introduction
Under the current operational and administrative structures, IETF
intellectual property rights are vested in the IETF Trust administered
by a board of trustees. This includes the right to make use of IETF
Contributions, as granted by Contributors under the rules laid out in
. The Trustees of the IETF Trust
are therefore responsible for defining the rights to copy granted by
the IETF to people who wish to make use of the material in these
documents.
For consistency and clarity, this document uses the same terminology
laid out in and uses the same
meanings as defined in that document.
The IETF Trust, by way of its Trustees, has indicated, as is
consistent with the IETF structure,
that it will respect the wishes of the IETF in regard to what these
granted rights ought to be. It is therefore the IETF's responsibility to
articulate those wishes. This document represents the wishes of the IETF
regarding the rights granted to all users in regard to IETF
Contributions, until it is superseded.
Purpose in Granting Rights
In providing a description of the wishes of the IETF with regard to
rights granted in RFCs, it is helpful to keep in mind the purpose of
granting such rights.
The mission of the IETF is to produce documents that make the Internet
work better (see for more details). These
documents, when completed, are published as RFCs.
An important subclass of RFCs is standards describing protocols; for
these, the primary value to the Internet is the ability of implementors
to build solutions (products, software, etc.) that interoperate using
these standards. Hence, the IETF has a strong interest in seeing
accurate, interoperable implementations of the material
the IETF publishes. The IETF Trust
grants rights to copy to people to make use of the text in the RFCs in
order to encourage accurate and interoperable implementations.
As early
implementations from Internet-Drafts make use of descriptions in those
Internet-Drafts, similar desires apply to Internet-Drafts.
Similar considerations also apply to non-standard,
non-protocol documents such as BCP (Best Current Practice) and
Informational documents; in this document, we recommend a common
approach to the issue of right-to-use licenses for all IETF
documents.
Previous documents regarding rights in IETF documents have included
in the RFC text specific text to be used to achieve the stated goals.
This has proved problematic. When problems are found with such text,
even when the problem is not a change in intent, it is necessary to
revise the RFC to fix the problem. At best, this delays fixing legal
issues that need prompt attention. As such, this document describes
the IETF desires to the Trustees of the IETF Trust, but does not
provide the specific legal wording to address the goals. The selection,
and updating as necessary, of legal wording is left to the Trustees of
the IETF Trust.
Powers and Authority
As described in the introduction, and formally specified in
, the legal authority for determining
and granting users rights to copy material in RFCs and other IETF
Contributions rests with the Trustees for the IETF
Trust. This
document provides guidance to that body, based on the rough consensus of
the IETF. The Trustees of the IETF Trust have the
authority and responsibility to determine the exact text insertions
(or other mechanisms), if any, needed in
Internet-Drafts, RFCs, and all IETF Contributions to meet these
goals. The IETF Trust License Policy is available from
.
To ensure continuity, the starting point for license text and other
materials will be that previously created by the Trustees of the IETF
under the authority of which this
document supersedes. Changes to the IETF documentation, and document
policies themselves, take effect as determined by the Trustees of the
IETF Trust.
This document does not specify what rights the IETF Trust
receives from others in IETF Contributions. That is left to another
document (). While care has been
taken by the working group in developing this document,
and care will be taken by the Trustees of the IETF Trust,
to see that sufficient rights are granted to the IETF Trust in IETF
Contributions, it is also the case that the Trust can not grant rights
it has not or does not receive, and it is expected that policies will be
in line with that fact. Similarly, the rights granted for pre-existing
documents can not be expanded unless the holders of rights in those
Contributions choose to grant expanded rights. Nonetheless, to the
degree it can, and without
embarking on a massive effort, it is desirable if similar rights to
those described below can be granted in older RFCs.
Recommended Grants of Right to Copy
The IETF grants rights to copy and modify parts of IETF Contributions
in order to meet the objectives described earlier. As such, different
circumstances and different parts of documents may need different
grants. This section contains subsections for each such different grant
that is currently envisioned. Each section is intended to describe a
particular usage, to describe how that usage is recognizable, and to
provide guidance to the Trustees of the IETF Trust as to what rights
the IETF would like to see granted in that circumstance and what
limitations should be put on such granting.
These recommendations for outgoing rights are structured around the
assumptions documented in . Thus,
this document is about granting rights derived from those granted to the
IETF Trust. The recommendations below are how those granted rights should
in turn be passed on to others using IETF documents in ways and for
purposes that fit with the goals of the IETF. This discussion
is also separate from discussion of the rights the IETF itself requires
in documents
to do its job, as those are not "outbound" rights. It is expected that
the rights granted to the IETF will be a superset of those copying
rights we wish to grant to others.
Rights Granted for Reproduction of RFCs
It has long been IETF policy to encourage copying of RFCs in full.
This permits wide dissemination of the material, without risking loss
of context or meaning. The IETF wishes to continue to permit anyone to
make full copies and translations of RFCs.
Rights Granted for Quoting from IETF Contributions
There is rough consensus that it is useful to permit quoting
without modification of excerpts from IETF Contributions. Such
excerpts may be of any length and in any context. Translation of
quotations is also to be permitted. All such quotations should be
attributed properly to the IETF and the IETF Contribution from which
they are taken.
Rights Granted for Implementing Based on IETF Contributions
IETF Contributions often include components intended to be directly
processed by a computer. Examples of these include ABNF definitions,
XML Schemas, XML DTDs, XML RelaxNG definitions, tables of values,
MIBs, ASN.1, and classical programming code. These are included
in IETF Contributions for clarity and precision in specification. It
is clearly beneficial, when such items are included in IETF
Contributions, to permit the inclusion of such code components in
products that implement the Contribution. It has been pointed out
that in several important contexts, use of such code requires the
ability to modify the code. One common example of this is simply the
need to adapt code for use in specific contexts (languages, compilers,
tool systems, etc.) Such use frequently requires some changes to the
text of the code from the IETF Contribution. Another example is that
code included in open source products is frequently licensed to permit
any and all of the code to be modified. Since we want this code
included in such products, it follows that we need to permit such
modification. While there has been discussion of restricting
in some way the rights to make such modifications, the rough consensus
of the IETF is
that such restrictions are likely a bad idea, and are certainly very
complex to define.
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. To
enable the broadest possible extraction, modification, and usage,
the IETF Trust should avoid adding software license obligations
beyond those already present in a Contribution. The granted
rights to extract, modify, and use code should allow creation
of derived works outside the IETF that may carry additional
license obligations. As the IETF Trust can not grant rights
it does not receive, the rights to extract, modify, and use code
described in this paragraph can not be granted in IETF
Contributions that are explicitly marked as not permitting
derivative works.
While it is up to the Trustees of the IETF Trust to determine the
best way of meeting
this objective, two mechanisms are suggested here that are believed to
be helpful in documenting the intended grant to readers and users of
IETF Contributions.
Firstly, the Trustees of the IETF Trust should maintain, in a
suitable, easily accessible
fashion, a list of common RFC components that will be considered to
be code. To start, this list should include at least the items listed
above. The Trustees of the IETF Trust will add to this list as
they deem suitable or as they are directed by the IETF.
Additionally, the Trustees of the IETF Trust should define a
textual representation to
be included in an IETF Contribution to indicate that a portion of the
document is considered by the authors (and later, the working group,
and upon approval, the IETF) to be code and thus subject to the
permissions granted to use code.
Rights Granted for Use of Text from IETF Contributions
There is no consensus at this time to permit the use of text from
RFCs in contexts where the right to modify the text is required. The
authors of IETF Contributions may be able and willing to grant such
rights independently of the rights they have granted to the IETF by
making the Contribution.
Additional Licenses for IETF Contributions
There have been contexts where the material in an IETF Contribution
is also available under other license terms. The IETF wishes to be
able to include content that is available under such licenses. It is
desirable to indicate in the IETF Contribution that other licenses are
available. It would be inappropriate and confusing if such additional
licenses restricted the rights the IETF intends to grant in the
content of RFCs.
However, the IETF does not wish to have IETF Contributions contain
additional licenses, as that introduces a number
of additional difficulties.
Specifically, additional text in the document, and any additional
license referred to by permitted additional text, must not in any way
restrict the rights the IETF intends to grant to others for using the
contents of IETF Contributions.
Authors of Contributions retain all rights in their Contributions.
As such, an author may directly grant any rights they wish separately
from what the IETF grants. However, a reader wishing to determine or
make use of such grants will need to either consult external sources of
information, possibly including
open source code and documents, or contact the author directly.
IANA Considerations
No values are assigned in this document, no registries are created,
and there is no action assigned to the IANA by this document. One list
(of kinds of code sections) is anticipated, to be created and maintained
by the Trustees of the IETF Trust. It is up to the Trustees of the IETF
Trust whether they create such a list and
whether they choose to involve the IANA in maintaining that list.
Security Considerations
This document introduces no new security considerations. It is a
process document about the IETF's IPR rights being granted to other
people. While there may be attacks against the integrity or
effectiveness of the IETF processes, this document does not address such
issues.
References
Normative References
Informative References
Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
IETF Trust