[AFS3-std] IBM will not re-license OpenAFS .xg files

[Russ Allbery]

Jason Edgecombe <jason@rampaginggeek.com> writes:

> How does this impact the AFS standardization?  What are the options to
> move forward?

This basically makes it impossible to publish, as an RFC, a specification
for the existing protocol or any new work that is, from a legal
perspective, a derived work of the existing *.xg files as released by IBM,
until such time as someone reverse-engineered the protocol specification
in a clean-room environment, or unless the RFC Editor would be willing to
publish documents covered by the IBM Public License.

(Note that a cogent legal argument can be made that there are no such
derived works or barriers to publication on the grounds that the existing
files are not copyrightable, but the RFC Editor lawyers would have to be
satisfied with such an argument despite what amounts to a contrary opinion
from IBM.  This strikes me as unlikely.  It's the kind of legal risk that
the RFC Editor is highly unlikely to take for something that's not IETF
work and is going through the independent submission track.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>