This page provides information on IETF RFC/I-Ds within Debian.
Background
The majority of IETF documents, such as RFCs, are not licensed under DFSG-free terms, and should thus not be included in Debian's main. However, RFC documents are frequently included in many packages that would otherwise be free software. Some care is required to remove the documents when packaging software for Debian.
Some links to discussion of the license problems:
- TBA add debian-legal links
Some general background:
In particular, the latter document above says:
- DFSG-freeness
- All content in main and contrib must meet the DFSG, both in .debs and in the source (including the .orig.tar.gz)
Status
All non-free RFC files in source packages are believed to be reported, see:
After the initial report against a lot of packages without manual checking, there were claims of false positives in the list. To this date, the only at least likely false positive was 393411 and 674940.
On 2006-10-24 I modified the script to recursively look into archives-within-archives in the source packages, to find deeply nested documents. Since that date, I run the debian-run script (see below) from time to time and report any changes. Since the amount of changes is now small, I try to check each package manually before reporting. As of 2009-04-21, this is still the current status.
On 2009-09-11 the last bug related to a package in testing was fixed (459705) and on 2009-09-22 the package entered testing. In order words, by that date, testing no longer contain any non-free RFCs! Since then, the status has regressed and some packages with RFCs in them has entered testing, but as of 2010-05-17 testing do not contain any RFCs.
As of 2010-05-17 the list of remaining packages (in unstable!) that contains IETF documents is 'samba4'.
On 2011-10-19 another check was made, and bugs were found (and reported) in lusca, open-iscsi, libpgm, isc-dhcp, libreoffice, and libmath-base85-perl.
Other checks can be made without referring to this page, like the http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=gnewsense;tag=libreplanet;users=gnewsense-dev@nongnu.org;, which spotted bacula (658326).
Known exceptions
These documents have been made available under a free license:
- The I-D draft-morgan-ident-ext-04.txt
See 390658
- The I-D's draft-riikonen-presence-attrs-03.txt, draft-riikonen-silc-commands-06.txt, draft-riikonen-silc-flags-payloads-04.txt, draft-riikonen-silc-ke-auth-08.txt, draft-riikonen-silc-pp-09.txt, and draft-riikonen-silc-spec-08.txt
- The I-D draft-ietf-cat-kerb-chg-password-02.txt
- RFC 2629.
- See the copyright of the source file in xml2rfc.
- RFC 5864.
- See the copyright of the source file in openafs.
- RFC 5215.
See section 11 "Copying Conditions" of the RFC: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5215#section-11
The following may hold but is questionable:
- US-authored RFCs earlier than RFC around RFC 1000-1100.
- These did not carry a copyright notice, and since the US did not sign the Berne convention until 1989, they are in the public domain.
See bug 365201 for some discussion. The RFC editor has something else to say on this
- These did not carry a copyright notice, and since the US did not sign the Berne convention until 1989, they are in the public domain.
From: RFC Editor <rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org> Subject: Re: Copyright and copying conditions for RFC 1510? To: Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> Cc: RFC Editor <rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org> Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 11:07:28 -0800 Simon, The copyright statement applies retroactively. Please follow the instructions as stated at: ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc-editor/rfc-copyright-story Thank you. RFC Editor On Sun, Dec 15, 2002 at 10:38:30AM +0100, Simon Josefsson wrote: > rfc1510.txt does not mention copyright or copying condition. Does the > copyright notice in > > ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc-editor/rfc-copyright-story > > apply retroactively? If not, do you know who owns the copyright of > the document and what the copying conditions are? > > Thanks.
Bug report template
This will be used for the reports on non-free RFCs in source packages.
Subject: Source package contains non-free IETF RFC/I-D Severity: serious Package: [package] Version: [version] User: debian-release@lists.debian.org Usertags: nonfree-doc rfc Hi! This source package contains the following files from the IETF under non-free license terms: FILES The license on RFC/I-Ds is not DFSG-free, see: * http://wiki.debian.org/NonFreeIETFDocuments * http://bugs.debian.org/199810 According to the squeeze/wheezy release policy, source packages must be DFSG-free, see: * http://release.debian.org/squeeze/rc_policy.txt * http://release.debian.org/wheezy/rc_policy.txt The severity is serious, because this violates the Debian policy: * http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-dfsg There are (at least) three ways to fix this problem. In order of preference: 1. Ask the author of the RFC to re-license the RFC under a free license. A template for this e-mail request can be found at http://wiki.debian.org/NonFreeIETFDocuments 2. Remove the non-free material from the source, e.g., by re-packaging the upstream archive and adding 'dfsg' to the Debian package version name. 3. Move the package to non-free. General discussions are kindly requested to take place on debian-legal or debian-devel in the thread with Subject: "Non-free IETF RFC/I-Ds in source packages". Thanks, Simon
Template for RFC authors to release additional rights
If you as a RFC editor wish to grant additional rights within the document directly, to avoid having the Debian community ask you for additional rights later on, you may include the following text in the document. Similar text has been approved in RFCs before (e.g., RFC 3492, RFC 4501) and the IETF do not appear to object to this practice.
x. Copying conditions The author(s) agree to grant third parties the irrevocable right to copy, use and distribute the work, with or without modification, in any medium, without royalty, provided that, unless separate permission is granted, redistributed modified works do not contain misleading author, version, name of work, or endorsement information.
The text is derived from draft-josefsson-ipr-notice-update.
Template requesting additional rights from RFC authors
This is based on RFC 4663 and draft-josefsson-ipr-rules-update (see <http://josefsson.org/bcp78broken/>).
Subject: Requesting additional rights to RFC xxxx Dear Author, The Debian GNU/Linux distribution wishes to incorporate the IETF RFC xxxx as part of its distribution, and to allow users to develop, modify and evolve the document. Under IETF policies that were in effect during the development of RFC xxxx, the authors of contributions to the IETF standards retain copyright with respect to such contributions. Because you are an author of said document, the Debian community hereby requests that you kindly agree to release your contributions in RFC xxxx under the license below, for inclusion in Debian. I agree to grant third parties the irrevocable right to copy, use and distribute the work, with or without modification, in any medium, without royalty, provided that, unless separate permission is granted, redistributed modified works: (a) do not contain misleading author, version, name of work, or endorsement information, and (b) do not claim endorsement of the modified work by the Contributor, or any organization the Contributor belongs to, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), Internet Society (ISOC), Request For Comments (RFC) Editor, or any combination or variation of such terms (including without limitation the IETF "4 diamonds" logo), or any terms that are confusingly similar thereto, and (c) remove any claims of status as an Internet Standard, including without limitation removing the RFC boilerplate. The IETF suggests that any citation or excerpt of unmodified text reference the RFC or other document from which the text is derived. To indicate that you agree to these terms, please reply to this e-mail and quote the license above and indicate that you agree to this. If you prefer another widely recognized free license instead, the following ones are also fine: * the 3-clause BSD license http://www.gnu.org/licenses/info/BSD_3Clause.html * the GNU GPL version 2 http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.txt * the Expat license http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt Sincerely yours, Simon Josefsson
Theory of operation
The source code to search for RFCs inside Debian can be found at http://git.josefsson.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=tools.git;a=tree;f=rfc-search;hb=HEAD