Re: Mass-filing RC bugs about IETF RFC license based on file name
I've reviewed the copyright file for the 66 bugs that I reported,
manually, and I also inspected at least one claimed non-free file in
each package. I should have done this from the start, but I felt
(over-)confident that there wouldn't be false positives.
I found one file that likely is a false positive, in the quagga (bug
#393411) package. It isn't clear if the file draft-zebra-00.txt is
from IETF or not, and has no standard copyright notice nor license.
It has the same boilerplate and look as an IETF draft, but the
reference to IETF have been removed. Most likely, this was a false
positive, and I'll explain this in the bug tracker, and change it to a
wishlist bug to explain this in the copyright file.
libdatetime-format-mail-perl (bug #393382) is the next closest to a
false positive that I came. The files (RFC 822 and RFC 2822) does not
contain the entire RFC, but they contain an extract from the RFCs.
The IETF lawyer has interpreted the RFC 2026 license to permit code
extracts from RFCs, but these extracts contains texts as well, so I
believe they are not OK.
For bug #393377, the jta package, bug #393421, the xrn package, and
bug #393386, the libemail-find-perl package, the source package
contains (only) old rfcs. The files do not have any copyright notice
or license statement in them, and the copyright file doesn't mention
the files either. But those RFCs were published before 1989, and may
thus be assumed to be in the public domain. However, I've asked the
RFC editor about this situation before [1], and they claim earlier
RFCs are covered by the more recent copyright statement anyway. So
without more information, I think those two bug reports are correct
anyway.
For some packages, the problem may have been fixed in unstable, like
for openldap2.3 and e2fsprogs, but the report made sense anyway, for
different reasons. For openldap2.3, the package in unstable was not
fully fixed, and for e2fsprogs, the package in testing is frozen so a
fixed package in unstable doesn't help.
Btw, for subversion, the copyright file gives a 404:
<http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/subversion.html>. Probably a
temporary problem...
/Simon
[1] Old e-mail:
From: RFC Editor <rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org>
Subject: Re: Copyright and copying conditions for RFC 1510?
To: Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>
Cc: RFC Editor <rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 11:07:28 -0800
Simon,
The copyright statement applies retroactively. Please follow the
instructions as stated at:
ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc-editor/rfc-copyright-story
Thank you.
RFC Editor
On Sun, Dec 15, 2002 at 10:38:30AM +0100, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> rfc1510.txt does not mention copyright or copying condition. Does the
> copyright notice in
>
> ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc-editor/rfc-copyright-story
>
> apply retroactively? If not, do you know who owns the copyright of
> the document and what the copying conditions are?
>
> Thanks.
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