Future time zone home

Marshall Eubanks tme at americafree.tv
Thu Dec 16 15:01:39 UTC 2010


Dear Elliot;

I have read your draft, and have two issues (which I think are also touched on here).

1.)    

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

While I certainly don't speak for the IESG,
I don't think that you are going to get such a ruling from the IETF. The IETF is not a court and
should not (IMO) be making assertions about other people's IPR. 

You should (IMO) assert that it is public domain here, and let the IETF accept that assertion. That is probably the
best you are going to get on this point. (I wouldn't be surprised if ISOC and IANA have similar concerns.)

2.) It is not clear to me from your document who will hold the copyright in the code (i.e., _who_ will be 
issuing the BSD license). If it is the IETF Trust, then it will have to be the "Simplified BSD License" we settled upon for IETF
code components. 

3.) A minor point 

This memo
   states that moving forward the TZ database will be distributed with a
   valid cryptographic signature.

You don't need to tell us what you are telling us. How about

Moving forward the TZ database SHOULD be distributed with a
   valid cryptographic signature.


Regards
Marshall




On Dec 16, 2010, at 9:11 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:

> Dear Tony,
> 
> On 10/21/10 6:09 PM, Tony Finch wrote:
>> On Thu, 21 Oct 2010, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] wrote:
>>>        http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lear-iana-timezone-database-00
>> I think this could be a good solution to the problem.
>> 
>> A few suggestions:
>> 
>> Section 5: Maintenance and Distribution of Reference Code
>> 
>>   Currently the maintainer of the TZ database also maintains reference
>>   code.  This software is currently distributed under the BSD license.
>> 
>> 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.
> 
> I've modified the text to state that several files are distributed under
> license, and that no attempts shall be made to change that license (not
> that this can easily happen).


> 
>> Section 6 is supposed to be about the database but contains a misplaced
>> comment about the code's licence which correctly contradicts section 5.
> 
> Corrected.
> 
>> There should be a section on the licensing of contributions, since the TZ
>> licence is more liberal than the IETF licence.
> 
> See next email to SM.
> 
> Eliot
> 
> 





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