From owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 21 22:09:26 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5812616A41F for ; Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:09:26 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from imp@bsdimp.com) Received: from harmony.bsdimp.com (vc4-2-0-87.dsl.netrack.net [199.45.160.85]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D17F243D7C for ; Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:06:24 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from imp@bsdimp.com) Received: from localhost (localhost.village.org [127.0.0.1] (may be forged)) by harmony.bsdimp.com (8.13.3/8.13.3) with ESMTP id jALM4as7046882; Mon, 21 Nov 2005 15:04:43 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from imp@bsdimp.com) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 15:04:52 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <20051121.150452.35505952.imp@bsdimp.com> To: jas@extundo.com From: "M. Warner Losh" In-Reply-To: References: X-Mailer: Mew version 3.3 on Emacs 21.3 / Mule 5.0 (SAKAKI) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-2.0 (harmony.bsdimp.com [127.0.0.1]); Mon, 21 Nov 2005 15:04:43 -0700 (MST) Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Proposed license for IETF Contributions X-BeenThere: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Documentation project List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:09:26 -0000 c. The Contributor grants third parties the irrevocable right to copy, use and distribute the Contribution, with or without modification, in any medium, without royalty, provided that unauthorized redistributed modified works do not contain misleading author, version, name of work, or endorsement information. This specifically implies, for instance, that unauthorized redistributed modified works must not claim endorsement of the modified work by the IETF, IESG, IANA, IAB, ISOC, RFC Editor, or any similar organization, and remove any claims of status as an Internet Standard, e.g., by removing the RFC boilerplate. The IETF requests that any citation or excerpt of unmodified text reference the RFC or other document from which the text is derived. > Comments? Suggestions? The only comment about the wording is the word 'request'. I don't believe that 'requests' isn't legally defined very well. Are requests legally binding obligations, or do they communicate wishes that are free to be ignored? Would 'suggests' be better? If it is non-optional, then "Any citation or excerpt of unmodified text shall reference the RFC or other document from which the text is quoted." maybe with the addition of the word 'substantial' after 'Any'. "This specifically implies, for instance, that" is wordy and verbose. It would be better to omit it entirely, and capitalize 'unauthorised': Unauthorized redistributed modified works must (a) not claim laim endorcsement by X, Y, Z (b) remove RFC boilerplate, etc This could likely be improved from there. A license is a series of obligations and grants. It should be clear from the grant what one may and may not do. Having added verbage gets in the way and can lead to ambiguous wording. Such phrases are better for a companion 'Explaining the License' document. Warner