[flac-dev] IETF FLAC specification

Martijn van Beurden mvanb1 at gmail.com
Wed Oct 27 06:57:12 UTC 2021


Hi all,

A few years ago, the Codec Encoding for LossLess Archiving and
Realtime transmission (CELLAR) working group of the IETF was formed.
They have been working on expanding current open standards, including
Matroska, EBML, FFV1 and FLAC with the aim of publishing RFCs for
these formats.

The thing is, they started out with the 'Format' document that is on
the website, which is licensed under GFDL. This document (according to
git history) has barely been touched by anyone since Josh Coalson
disappeared from the FLAC project. Due to legal issues at the IETF,
the question was asked if Josh Coalson could be contacted about
exempting the IETF of the requirements the GFDL poses. Apparently, the
IETF would like to reserve the right to call something RFC XXXX, and
not have someone else edit the document and publish it as an IETF RFC.
This is covered by trademark rights in most, but not all countries,
which is why the IETF doesn't want to use GNU FDL protected parts.

So, CELLAR has two options: rewrite the whole document or contact Josh
Coalson on this issue. My question now is: does anyone know how to
contact him? Can perhaps someone forward this e-mail or contact him
directly?

Kind regards,

Martijn van Beurden


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