Hi - > From: "Dave CROCKER" <d...@dcrocker.net> > To: "John C Klensin" <john-i...@jck.com> > Cc: "IETF discussion list" <ietf@ietf.org> > Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 1:05 PM > Subject: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary ... > That is: Working groups are part of the IETF and 'authors' of working group > documents are acting as when writing IETF documents.agents of the IETF. > While
I assume the missing word is "editors" > there might be underlying intellectual property owned by the companies that > authors work for, the actual document is commissioned by, and copyright > should > be owned by, the IETF. AMEN! > Let me carry it further: When Erik Huizer and I wrote the first IETF Working > Group Guidelines document, it was at our initiative. (Well, really, Erik's.) > When it was adopted by the IETF, I automatically assumed that the IETF owned > it. That has always been my understanding regarding work I've done for the IETF. > That is, after all, what we assert when outside technology is brought into > the > IETF and we insist that they are handing over "change control". What is > change > control if not the authority to make changes to the document? Yup. > So when Scott Bradner did the revision to the IETF Working Group Guidelines > document the idea that he had a legal obligation to get our permission would > have -- and certainly now does -- strike me as silly. Particularly since the permission to create derivative works and successor standards has been granted as part of the boilerplate for a long long time. > That's me talking as a participant, about pragmatics, not me pretending to be > a > attorney, talking about copyright law. Ditto. Consequently, as a WG co-chair who wants his WG to finish up in this century, I read RFC 5378 section 5.3 as giving working groups what they need so they can ignore all this stuff about tracking down long-gone contributors, and that it's merely a re-incarnation of what has long been the intent behind the NOTE WELL text. One can easily imagine a situation in which a disgruntled party named as a contributor in an early version of work might refuse to give permission under some readings of an RFC 5378 regime, effectively killing the work. As John says, paraphrase is *not* a realistic option, especially with carefully-crafted WG compromise text. Randy _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
