IEEE on oui.txt and iab.txt

[Luciano Bello <luciano@debian.org>]

Please include me in CC, I'm not subscribed to the list

Hi there,
    I know that this topic was brought up in the past. But it is time for a 
proper resolution, so here I go again.

    IEEE publishes two files, one is "Organizationally Unique Identifier" (OUI) 
and other one with "Individual Address Block" (IAB) in the following addresses:
http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/iab/public.html
http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/oui/public.html

    Usually, these files are used to detect the brand of MAC addresses. They are 
included in many packages, in many operating systems, with or without 
modifications, partially or completely. The files are repeated in many packages 
and, in order to avoid that repetition, the bug #522741 was filed more than 4 
years ago.

     In order to close that bug I contacted IEEE, asking for a clarification 
about the license of these files. They answer was:

"""Please be advised that the IEEE does not authorize the use of third party 
extrapolation from a list that is generated from the assignments that are 
issued by IEEE.  IEEE is the exclusive Registration Authority to perform 
this service.  Therefore, any distribution of addresses assigned by IEEE 
are only official when they are from the IEEE public listing."""

     When I ask what means "third party extrapolation", the answer was:

"""IEEE does not issue licenses for the use of the public listing. "third party 
extrapolation" is the distribution of the public listing by anyone other than 
the IEEE"""

     The situation is quite ridiculous. Parts of those files are everywhere, 
including many packages. Even many kernels like the OpenBSD one include 
information from it. And we *are* distributing that information already.

     I really would like to close #522741 and stop with the repetition.
    
     Notice that they also said: """it is heavily encouraged that you link to 
the database for look-up rather than programming.""" so it would be possible, in 
principle, to make a package to download it (a la flashplugin-nonfree package). 
But in that case should it go to non-free? Should every packaging using those 
files end up in contrib?

Thanks, luciano