Subject: Last Call on Revised IETF Internet-Drafts procedure

From: Steve Coya <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 10:42:51 -0500

Revised IETF Internet-Drafts procedure

At the Orlando IETF plenary session I made a presentation for the IESG
about some issues that have arisen about the copyright provisions in RFC
2026.  In particular , the copyright provisions in 2026 are not as clearly
written as they might have been.  In one place section 10.3.1) RFC 2026
says that the intellectual property rights rules apply to "all
contributions" and in another (section 10.4) it says that copyright notices
need only appear on standards track documents. (Note that for the last year
or so the RFC Editor has been putting the copyright notice on all RFCs.)

To eliminate any confusion over the applicability of the intellectual
property rights rules in RFC 2026 we proposed that the following addition
be made to the boilerplate text that must be inserted at the head of all
Internet-Drafts.

   "This Internet-Draft is in conformance with Section 10 of RFC2026"

Since some Internet-Drafts are published purely for the information of the
IETF community and not meant to become input to the IETF standards process,
(standards developed by other standards bodies are an example) we also
proposed that the author of an Internet-Draft could append the following
text to the above sentence.

   "except for the granting of the right to make derivative works"

Finally we proposed that the Internet-Drafts editor be instructed to return
any Internet-Drafts submissions which did not include the version of the
boilerplate with the notice.  

The rational here is that by submitting a document including the specific
acceptance of the RFC 2026 intellectual property rights rules, there can be
no later claim that there was no knowledge or acceptance of the rules.  We
also wanted to be sure that any refusal to grant the rights to produce
derivative works would be highlighted. 

During the discussion that followed two specific additions to the proposal
were agreed to.  

	1/ The IESG would have to specifically approve all Internet-Drafts
which did not grant the right  to produce derivative works.  The idea being
that we should be discouraging this type of publication unless it provides
a specific benefit to the IETF community.

	2/ Any RFC which was published from an Internet-Draft  where the
right to produce derivative works was not granted should have a notice to
that effect  inserted near the head of the document by the RFC Editor.

After the discussion a show of hands was held to determine if there was a
consensus to proceed with this proposal Ð the result was about 1000 to 1
in favor of proceeding.  (The attendance at the plenary was about 1,000 and
one person raised their hand in opposition.)

Following the processes defined in RFC 2418 the result of the plenary
discussion is being announced here to verify consensus on the proposal.
But, as noted in RFC 2418 section 3.3, the evaluation of the level of
consensus will take into account the results of the plenary session.  Thus
this is a two week Last-Call on this proposal.  

Please only discuss this proposal on the poised list
([email-masked]).