Future time zone home

SM sm at resistor.net
Sun Oct 24 09:18:09 UTC 2010


At 06:11 21-10-10, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] wrote:
>In response to the need to find a new time zone home before I'm 
>eligible to retire in 2012, Eliot Lear and Paul Eggert have authored 
>the draft document "IANA Procedures for Maintaining the Timezone 
>Database" now available from the Internet Engineering Task Force 
>(IETF) web site:

As the intended status of the document is BCP, I'll comment on it 
from that angle.  In Section 1:

   "Those registries are coordinated by technical experts who are
    designated by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG)."

For what it's worth, some of these registries might not fall under the IESG.

In Section 2:

   'This list membership will be transitioned to the IETF mail server.
    The TZ coordinator will continue to manage the list, in accordance
    with rules of governance for non-WG mailing lists (including, for
    example, the commonly used "Note Well" statement).'

Will the contributions fall under "Note Well" rules?

In Section 4:

   "From time to time it will be necessary to replace a TZ Coordinator.
    This could occur for a number of reasons:"

I suggest "appoint" instead of "replace".

   "The IESG MUST use rough consensus of the TZ mailing
    list as their primary guide to further action, when it exists."

As the document is a BCP, these requirement could be changed in future.

In Section 5:

   "No change shall be made to the license without consultation and rough
    consensus of the community."

The document uses "rough consensus" instead of consensus".  The 
barrier is lower for the former.  The above text mentioned 
"community".  Is that the TZ community?

In Section 6:

   "It is the understanding of the IESG, ISOC, and IANA that the database
    itself is public domain."

I suggest replacing "IESG" with "IETF" as the IESG operates within the IETF.

   "Should claims be made and substantiated against the database,
    the IANA will act in accordance with all competent court orders."

I suggest putting code distribution under the IETF so that the legal 
aspect falls under the IETF Trust.  The following sentence could then 
be removed:

   "Should claims be made and substantiated against the database,
    the IANA will act in accordance with all competent court orders."

I suggest removing "further" from the following sentence:

   "No further ownership claims will be made by IANA, the IETF Trust,
    or ISOC on the database."

In Section 7:

   "The IANA will see that the role of TZ Coordinator is filled, based on
    the procedures described above."

According to Section 4, it is the IESG that does that.

There is a MoU between IANA and the IETF for IETF protocols.  There 
has been various interpretations of that MoU.  An alternative to 
avoid non-technical concerns is to place the distribution of the 
database under the RFC Editor and explore having the material with a 
status similar to the Independent Submission Stream.  I am not 
suggesting a license change.  The following text is an adaption from RFC 4846:

   To the extent that a TZ Contribution or any portion thereof is
   protected by copyright and other rights of authorship, the
   Contributor, and each named co-Contributor, and the organization
   he or she represents or is sponsored by (if any) grant an
   irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide right and
   license to the IETF Trust and the IETF under all intellectual
   property rights in the TZ Contribution in perpetuity, to copy,
   publish, display, and distribute the TZ Contribution.

   The Contributor, each named co-Contributor, and the organizations
   represented above irrevocably and in perpetuity grant the rights
   listed below to the Internet Community:

   A.  to prepare or allow the preparation of translations of the
       TZ database into languages other than English,

   B    to prepare derivative works (other than translations)
        that are based on or incorporate all or  part of the
        TZ Contribution, or comment upon it.  The license to such
        derivative works shall not grant the IETF Trust, the IETF,
        or other party preparing a derivative work any more rights
        than the license to the original TZ Contribution, and

   C.   to reproduce any trademarks, service marks, or trade names
        that are included in the TZ Contribution solely in
        connection with the reproduction, distribution, or
        publication of the TZ Contribution and derivative
        works.

At 09:09 21-10-10, Tony Finch wrote:
>Apart from three files, the current tzcode distribution is public domain.
>There is no single BSD licence so this statement is ambiguous. In fact the
>licence on the three special files is more like a MIT licence.

Yes.

Regards,
-sm 




More information about the tz mailing list