RFCs - insufficiently free? [LWN.net]

RFCs - insufficiently free?

Posted Jul 27, 2003 1:40 UTC (Sun) by whig (guest, #8781)
Parent article: RFCs - insufficiently free?

RFCs may be under an insufficiently free license if, and only if, they disallow modification under the following terms:

* Your derived document must include a statement of derivation giving the original authorship and RFC number; and

* It must specifically, clearly, and obviously disclaim to be the RFC, or any sort of RFC, until and unless it is approved as such.

Saying that one cannot change the text of an RFC and yet continue to maintain that it is the RFC would be a potential fraud. And that fraud would seem to appertain to the original author, unless one were sufficiently careful to verify the derivation. And if the copyright were *also* left intact, there would even be no obvious way to know that the derived document was not the actual author's work, and was not the RFC.

So it is possibly necessary for the licensing to be changed to comply with DFSG. And it is possibly necessary for the DFSG to be changed to allow for the restrictions stated here. I believe this would solve the outstanding conflict, and allow for the RFCs to be included in the main Debian distribution.

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RFCs - insufficiently free?

Posted Jul 27, 2003 1:53 UTC (Sun) by whig (guest, #8781) [Link]

Reply to myself:

By "insufficiently free," I mean that this should be insufficiently free *for Debian.*

Perhaps also I should not say "and only if." There could be *additional* restrictions that would make it not free.

I think that the restrictions I stated before are reasonable ones for Debian to accept, however.

My opinion is subject to revision if I rethink this. But this is my current thinking on it.