Subject: Adminrest: created IPR

From: [email-masked] (Scott Bradner)
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 22:16:14 -0500 (EST)

the new draft asks:
      Do we need wording about the ownership of IETF tools and data?  We
      have some text (in Section 2.2) about IPR, but does that fully
      cover tools and data?

fwiw - my intention in the text that is now 2.2(6) was to cover the 
tools and data 

Scott

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 09:58:38 +0100

> fwiw - my intention in the text that is now 2.2(6) was to cover the 

Subject to legal advice, that seems OK to me. But maybe we should make
a word or two to make the rights irrevocable.

    Brian

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 18:02:16 +0100

> a word or two to make the rights irrevocable.

I'm not sure if the current text clearly implies that tools created
for the IASA by a contractor, and data collected for the IASA by a
contractor shall be openly available.

And maybe a separate point, would it be desirable when we talk
about tools and data in particular, to specify that the IASA must
ensure that tools developed by a contractor for the IETF or IASA must
be open source, and that data collected by a contractor for the IETF
or IASA must be available in a documented machine-readable format?
Or is this to go into too much details...

	Henrik

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From: Carl Malamud <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 15:59:25 -0800 (PST)

2.2.6 currently reads:

The right to use any intellectual property  rights created by any IASA-related or 
IETF  activity may not be withheld or limited in any  way by ISOC from the IETF.

You could simply append:

As a matter of principle the IAOC and IAD should ensure that any contracts 
for IASA clearly designate that any software, databases, and websites should 
be openly available, including open source for software and a machine-readable 
format for databases, whenever possible.

[ Charset ISO-8859-1 unsupported, converting... ]

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From: [email-masked] (Scott Bradner)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 19:16:53 -0500 (EST)

> The right to use any intellectual property  rights created by any 
> IASA-related or IETF  activity may not be withheld or limited in 
> any way by ISOC from the IETF.
> 
> You could simply append:
> 
> be openly available, including open source for software and a 
> machine-readable format for databases, whenever possible.

"openly available" is different than making sure that the source 
is available to the IETF during or after the contract

I'm not sure the IETF should insist that all software is open source

(I am sure that any software written by someone being paid to
write the software by the IETF must be available for the IETF to
move to another contractor)

I do not have a real strong feeling here but it seems that this
text would limit the flexaility of the IAD to get the best value for
its $

Scott

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From: Carl Malamud <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 16:26:33 -0800 (PST)

Scott -

I did postfix "whenever possible" and prefix "as a matter of
principle" ... this simply says if you're not going to do it
that way, please have a reason.  

Regards,

Carl

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From: [email-masked] (Scott Bradner)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 19:34:44 -0500 (EST)

> v

another thing to appeal ?  :-)

Scott

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 09:25:14 +0100

> contractor shall be openly available.

I think the IETF needs the power to decide this on a case by case basis.
For instance, we've had multiple rounds of making it more difficult to 
extract email addresses from our attendee list - "openly available" means 
"available to spammers too". Not to mention that we have records of email 
conversations that deal with personnel selection matters.

"Available for use in the IETF" is obvious; "available to the IETF with no 
restriction by the contractor" is sensible. But be careful....

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 10:19:23 +0100

> format for databases, whenever possible.

What about this text, (added to 2.2.6):

   "As a matter of principle the IAOC and IAD should ensure that any
   contracts for IASA clearly designate that any software, databases,
   and websites developed should be available to the IETF with no
   restriction by the contractor.  Software should be open source and
   data should be made available to the IETF in machine-readable
   format, also in cases where it may be inadvisable to make the data
   openly available."

	Henrik

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 10:27:29 +0100

> IETF  activity may not be withheld or limited in any  way by ISOC from the IETF.

I suggest inserting the word "irrevocable" before the word "right."  That covers us
in the case of blowing the bolts.

> format for databases, whenever possible.

I think this is OK as is.

    Brian

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 10:34:16 +0100

>    format, also in cases where it may be inadvisable to make the data

this works for me (my only problem is stylistic - it's somewhat long for a 
principle, so may fit better in the "details" sections, if a place can be 
found for it).

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From: Allison Mankin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 05:58:08 -0800

Folks,

Good stuff here, but...

I'd like to put in a plug for making it a mandatory* principle
that the IETF end up in no-restrictions possession of data contents from 
the databases and websites from any contractors.

This is different from specifics about what tools are used, open source
etc, and what the public availability of the data is.

So the text below still needs to be teased a little, esp. because it's mixing 
the tools and the contents.

Allison

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From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 10:19:42 -0500

>>>>> "Harald" == Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

    Harald> --On fredag, desember 03, 2004 10:19:23 +0100 Henrik
    Harald> Levkowetz
    Harald> <[email-masked]> wrote:

    >> "As a matter of principle the IAOC and IAD should ensure that
    >> any contracts for IASA clearly designate that any software,
    >> databases, and websites developed should be available to the
    >> IETF with no restriction by the contractor.  Software should be
    >> open source and data should be made available to the IETF in
    >> machine-readable format, also in cases where it may be
    >> inadvisable to make the data openly available."
    >> 

    Harald> this works for me (my only problem is stylistic - it's
    Harald> somewhat long for a principle, so may fit better in the
    Harald> "details" sections, if a place can be found for it).
I like the spirit of this as well.  I think it would be nice for the
software developed with IETF money to be open source especially in
situations where there is not a compelling reason to do otherwise.  I
think that data should generally be openly available, with exceptions
for things like mailing list subscriptions, archives of private
mailing lists, etc.

--Sam

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From: Leslie Daigle <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 11:45:44 -0500

Hang on... are we not getting too detailed again, at the
risk of over-constraining ourselves?

As has been mentioned on this thread -- we (IETF) may well want
to take advantage of non-open-source software, if it's the
most effective & efficient choice.  I'm thinking specifically
of contracting with a provider that has their own software tools.

Neither should we be constraining ourselves to choose from
providers with open source tools, nor should we be requiring
that *all* features we ask to add to those tools be available
as open source, or freely to the IETF, etc.

Taking the step back -- the principle was that the IETF should
retain the rights to, ability to access, and ability to move
the data it creates.    Period.

Sensible ways of achieving that include (but are not limited
to) working with open source tools and/or ensuring we retain ownership
of any software that touches that data.  Others include
using reasonably accessible off the shelf software (one Excel
program is much the same as the next...), or agreeing on
data interchange formats.  Let's not try to make the laundry list
in this document.

Leslie.

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
> this works for me (my only problem is stylistic - it's somewhat long for 
> a principle, so may fit better in the "details" sections, if a place can 
> be found for it).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 

-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Reality:
      Yours to discover."
                                 -- ThinkingCat
Leslie Daigle
[email-masked]
-------------------------------------------------------------------

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 18:09:01 +0100

No, I think that as a principle that prevents us from inadvertently
or short-sightedly putting ourself into a locked-in position vis-a-vis
a contractor, this kind of statement of principle is exactly what
we need.

	Henrik

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From: Leslie Daigle <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 12:19:50 -0500

Henrik,

I believe that's true of the principle, expressed this way:

[I wrote:]
 >>the data it creates.    Period.

I (still) believe that the text that was proposed (detailing
*how* to implement that principle) is in danger of
locking us out of, say, contracting with a professional
meeting organization service that has proprietary software
for managing meeting attendee lists.  (I.e., software that
could do a data dump for us, but that is not open source,
for which we will not have license to run in perpetuity,
yada yada yada).

Leslie.

--

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 18:44:53 +0100

Hi Leslie,

> for which we will not have license to run in perpetuity,

I agree that we should not lock ourselves out of the possibility
to avail ourselves of services of the kind you delineate here,
(something I also tried to indicate in a response to Bert
on this topic earlier).  

But I also believe that the principle you state initially above deals
only with the data, and leaves the issue of tools _developed for_
the IETF undefined; a case which is different from services bought by
the IETF, provided by independently developed tools - the case you
illustrate in your example.

It is this distinct case I would prefer to have covered, in
addition to the case for the data (on which I agree).

	Henrik

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From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 13:26:12 -0500

The specific term is "work for hire".  All data, created software, etc must 
be considered the result of "work for hire" and as such is the property of 
ISOC in trust for the IETF.

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From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 13:49:03 -0500

>for things like mailing list subscriptions, archives of private

I generally agree with these things, too.  However, I think that 
trade-offs/decisions regarding the IP rights associated with IT tools 
are decisions that the IAOC & IAD should be entrusted to make.

I also think that the IAOC should structure our contracts so that the 
IASA function has access to all of the data associated with our 
operations (documents, tracker state, e-mail archives, etc.).  I 
don't necessarily think that the IETF (the open community of Internet 
folks) should have unrestricted access to all that data, though.

In short, I don't think that we should be trying to specify 
secretariat contract terms in this BCP.  We can argue about those 
terms when the IASA TT and/or the IAOC puts out a draft RFP for 
review.

Margaret

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From: Carl Malamud <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 10:59:19 -0800 (PST)

> ISOC in trust for the IETF.

I agree, and would simply add "whenever possible".  Remember, this is
not the contract, it is guidance to the folks that make contracts.
You can say "work for hire" or "openly available" or whatever
makes the intent clear.  There will be exceptions ... this simply
instructs those folks to try to err on the side of open and if
not, please give a good reason.  Let's not be too prescriptive with
words like "trust" and "work for hire" as those are terms of
art and have special meaning.

Carl

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From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 14:10:29 -0500

>>>>> "Margaret" == Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]> writes:

    >> I like the spirit of this as well.  I think it would be nice
    >> for the software developed with IETF money to be open source
    >> especially in situations where there is not a compelling reason
    >> to do otherwise.  I think that data should generally be openly
    >> available, with exceptions for things like mailing list
    >> subscriptions, archives of private mailing lists, etc.

    Margaret> I generally agree with these things, too.  However, I
    Margaret> think that trade-offs/decisions regarding the IP rights
    Margaret> associated with IT tools are decisions that the IAOC &
    Margaret> IAD should be entrusted to make.

Agreed.  I'm happy giving some guidance in the BCP.  I'm also happy
not doing so.  I would not be happy placing requirements on the IAOC
on this issue in the BCP.

    Margaret> I also think that the IAOC should structure our
    Margaret> contracts so that the IASA function has access to all of
    Margaret> the data associated with our operations (documents,
    Margaret> tracker state, e-mail archives, etc.).  I don't
    Margaret> necessarily think that the IETF (the open community of
    Margaret> Internet folks) should have unrestricted access to all
    Margaret> that data, though.

Completely agreed.