IANA MIBs and copyrights ... some ideas (was: printermib - problemsother than compliances)

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
> 1. I don't think we have consensus between the MIB reviewers 
>    yet on that issue. If we could drive to consensus on that
>    quickly, then I am willint to push for that consensus.

I agree with that.

>    I agree that we need to change the copyright statement
>    somewhat. Not sure if it should be the full copy-right,
>    the rmon example I used when we got to the IESG statement
>    on these copy-right statements and that was not acceptable.
>    But let me bring this to the IESG, cause someone already
>    complained formally to IANA that the IANA ifType MIB
>    does not have a copyright statement, so we need to fix that
>    anyway. We can deal with this when the stuff goes to RFC
>    Editor and IANA.

OK.  You might note (maybe I said this earlier) that all of the
IANA-maintained MIB modules lack a copyright statement, so all of
them need to be fixed.  Going forward, the form of the solution
might depend on whether we adopt a policy of publishing the initial
version in an RFC (which some people like) or not (my preference).
In the former case one could say something like this:

    Copyright (C) The Internet Society (year).  The
    initial version of this MIB module was published
    as part of RFC xxxx;  see that RFC for full legal
    notices.

That of course would not work for the existing IANA-maintained MIB
modules that were not ever part of some RFC, nor would it work if
we decide that the initial version of the MIB module shouldn't be
published in an RFC (as I advocate, and as has been recent
practice).  Here is a possible modification that might work in that
case if putting in the full copyright statement is not acceptable:

    Copyright (C) The Internet Society (year).  The
    initial version of this MIB module was published
    in coordination with RFC xxxx;  see that RFC for
    full legal notices. 

In any case, IANA would need to keep the year up-to-date when
making changes (yet one more thing for them to do :-( ).

Anyway, these are some ideas that you might want to consider.

Thanks,

Mike