Subject: Re: [codec] Last Call: <draft-ietf-codec-opus-12.txt> (Definition of the Opus Audio Codec) to Proposed Standard

From: Stephan Wenger <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:53:13 +0000

Hi,
This subject was also raised by our AD on the codec mailing list.  The
statement is about spec text copyright (with the possible exception of the
word "use", which is loaded in this context, see BSD license and implicit
patent grant ambiguity).  Insofar, the patent licensing statement received
appear to be irrelevant to this discussion.
Generally speaking, according to the TLP, the authors are free to provide
a wider copyright grant than the TLP is providing, and they intend to do
so with this section.  See also here:
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/codec/current/msg02845.html for some
justification.  The question of whether a section in the subject doc is
the right place for such a grant has not yet been answered.
My view on the latter: it's not.  One issue of having such a notice is
that it expressly allows derivative work, possibly WITHOUT removing the
IETF boilerplate and the TLP copyright notice first.  This would go
against language and spirit of the TLP.  We (the IETF) does NOT want and
do not allow derivative work of our specs outside of the IETF process.
The authors are free to publish the opus spec elsewhere, with whatever
copyright grants they wish to attach to.  But they should first remove any
references of the doc being an IETF-RFC or , more precisely, falling under
the TLP.  
Stephan

On 4.30.2012 21:05 , "SM" <[email-masked]> wrote:

>At 13:20 26-04-2012, The IESG wrote:
>>The IESG has received a request from the Internet Wideband Audio Codec WG
>>(codec) to consider the following document:
>>- 'Definition of the Opus Audio Codec'
>>   <draft-ietf-codec-opus-12.txt> as a Proposed Standard
>
>Section 10 about "copying conditions" mentions "without
>royalty".  There was a message to the CODEC mailing list about the
>Qualcomm IPR disclosure.  The Licensing declaration in the Huawei IPR
>disclosures do not mention royalty-free.  Was that taken into account
>by the authors for the statement in Section 10?
>
>Could the authors please clarify what they mean by "the work" in the
>following:
>
>   "The authors agree to grant third parties the irrevocable right to
>    copy, use and distribute the work (excluding Code Components
>    available under the simplified BSD license)"
>
>Regards,
>-sm  
>
>

---

From: Ron <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 May 2012 11:10:37 +0930

Hi Stephan,

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 10:53:13PM +0000, Stephan Wenger wrote:
> The question of whether a section in the subject doc is
> IETF boilerplate and the TLP copyright notice first.

Except that the additional grant explicitly requires that:

 "redistributed modified works do not contain misleading author, version,
  name of work, or endorsement information."

And my understanding is that the sort of misrepresentations which you suggest
are already well protected against in established law.  So I don't think that
this would weaken the IETF's position in the event of such a thing happening,
and I'm not aware of any such problem occurring with any of the RFCs that are
already published containing such a grant.  Similarly there exist other RFCs
which already have external grants too, and there has been no hint of trouble
or an inability to prevent it if it arose with those either, has there?

If this clause becomes a blocker, then we should simply remove it, but in that
case it would be good to have clear reasons why it became a blocker, since the
things you say you fear here, I see as already being prohibited anyway.

I agree with you that this is an entirely separate issue to the validity or
other implications of any of the IPR claims though.  But on that note, have
you had any clarification from Huawei as to whether they believe their newly
acquired patent actually does read on this technology?  Last I had heard on
that there was some doubt and they were still studying it?  It would be nice
to have them officially clear that up.

Cheers,
Ron