(ITS#4693) Unnecessary licensing statement in core.schema?

[quanah@stanford.edu]

Full_Name: Quanah Gibson-Mount
Version: All
OS: NA
URL: ftp://ftp.openldap.org/incoming/
Submission from: (NULL) (171.66.155.86)


The core.schema file has the following included in it:

## Portions Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1997-2003).
## All Rights Reserved.
##
## This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
## others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
## or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
## and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
## kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
## included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
## document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
## the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
## Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
## developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
## copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
## followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
## English.
##
## The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
## revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
##
## This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
## "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
## TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
## BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
## HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
## MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


This is causing some unhappiness from the Debian folks, but their final
conclusion is that core.schema is not copyrightable under US law:

[snip email 1]
> Doesn't the copyright in question apply to the RFC only? AFAICS,
> core.schema basically reads:

>   1. Part of OpenLDAP, with the following license:
>   2. OpenLDAP license (see license.html)
>   3. Based on an RFC, with the following license:
>   4. RFC license
>   5. Specific RFC attributions
>   6. The schema itself

[snip email 2]
> Plus, this is an interface specification if I've ever seen one, and
> interface specifications are not copyrightable under US law.

[snip email 3]
> 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.


If these are correct, then shouldn't this license actually be removed from
core.schema?

--Quanah