Bug#361846: [Pkg-openldap-devel] Bug#361846: non-free license for core.schema

[Russ Allbery]

Steve Langasek <vorlon at debian.org> writes:

>> Plus, this is an interface specification if I've ever seen one, and
>> interface specifications are not copyrightable under US law.

> I agree, but was hesitant to assert this without some corroboration.

> If this file is a non-copyrightable interface definition, the bug here is
> the presence of a copyright notice and license statement where there should
> be none.

After further discussion with upstream, apparently in some of the schema
files they are including substantial portions of the RFCs as comments,
enough so that their legal counsel felt they needed to include the
relevant portions of the license.

I believe the correct path for Debian going forward would then be to strip
all the RFC-originated comments from all of the schema files (including in
the source tarball), add a comment pointing people to the relevant RFC,
and then remove the IESG license as well.

For core.schema, there's only one comment that probably isn't long enough
to be anything other than fair use, but some of the other schemas contain
much more substantial comments.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>