Subject: RFC Series Editor statement on authorship

From: RFC Series Editor <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 May 2015 17:32:46 -0700

The intent of the author list in the document header and the Authors
Addresses space in an RFC is to indicate who is responsible for the
technical content of the document. Listing as an author indicates active
technical contribution to the text either by personally writing a
substantial part of it or by detailed and close technical collaboration
with the person(s) doing so. If the development of a document has been
delegated or subcontracted, the authors are the person(s) doing the
actual writing, not the person(s) delegating or subcontracting the work.
The RFC Series provides for acknowledgement and contributor section to
recognize other parties that support the document but who are not
authors by the definition above.

In keeping with the history of the RFC Series, if there are more than
five authors for a single document, one or two editors should be chosen
and listed, and all contributors to the text should be listed in the
contributor section (see Section 4.1.1. of the RFC Style Guide [RFC7322]).
Exceptions should be discussed with the relevant stream approving body
(IESG, IRSG, IAB, or ISE) and the RFC Editor.

All contributors are expected to review the intellectual property rules
governing their contributions, as described in the IETF Trust Legal
Provisions <http://trustee.ietf.org/trust-legal-provisions.html>.
These rules provide guidance applicable to all document streams.

This guidance will be added to the RFC Style Guide
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/styleguide.html>.