[rfc-i] Objection to reworked para 6.d (Re: Rationale for Proposed TLP Revisions)

[Harald Alvestrand]

John C Klensin wrote:
> --On Monday, July 20, 2009 14:20 +0200 Julian Reschke
> <julian.reschke at gmx.de> wrote:
>
>   
>> Julian Reschke wrote:
>>     
>>> ...
>>> 3) If I *extract* ABNF from these documents (such as for the
>>> purpose of  generating an input file for an ABNF parser), do
>>> I need to include the  BSD license text? If so, can somebody
>>> explain how to do that given the  constraints of the ABNF
>>> syntax?
>>> ...
>>>       
>> Explanation: for some reason I thought that the ABNF syntax
>> only allows comments that are attached to an ABNF rule; but it
>> appears that I was confused.
>>     
>
> Independent of that, considering any sequence of ABNF statements
> as necessarily "code" goes far beyond the intent of the IPR WG
> as I, at least, understood it.   If you, as author, want to
> identify it as "code", that is your perogative, but this is
> about copyright and not patents and, at least IMO, metalanguage,
> metasyntax, pseudo-code, etc., are not intrinsically code in the
> sense that the WG discussed and intended it.
>   
ABNF was specifically used as an example of "code" in the WG discussions.

RFC 5377 section 4.3:


   IETF Contributions often include components intended to be directly
   processed by a computer.  Examples of these include ABNF definitions,
   XML Schemas, XML DTDs, XML RelaxNG definitions, tables of values,
   MIBs, ASN.1, and classical programming code.