Subject: proposed new charter

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 16:12:23 -0500

Any comments on it before the IESG considers it?

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

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From: "Bill Fenner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 20:09:49 -0800

> Any comments on it before the IESG considers it?

I'm just lurking here, but it's clear to me that there's a disconnect
between the ipr WG and the rest of the IETF.  I'd like to see the WG
assist in the plans for transition to new boilerplate, updating
1id-guidelines to reflect reality (since I'm told that it's wrong,
although it reflects my best effort to translate RFC 3978 into
english), and any other IETF-facing / Secretariat-facing work that
needs to be done because of new creations of the WG.

  Bill

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 08:52:18 +0100

> needs to be done because of new creations of the WG.

Bill, isn't that more an admin/legal issue, once the WG has reached
consensus on the process issue?

    Brian

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From: "Bill Fenner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 08:48:59 -0800

> consensus on the process issue?

I don't think so.  This WG is in a unique position in which most IETF
participants are not expected to be able to understand its outputs
(since they're in legal jibberish), but are required to follow them. 
My understanding is that you can't also publish documents in english,
since if the english and the jibberish say different things then that
could cause legal problems when someone wants to do the thing that's
different.

So, we get a procedures document which we can barely understand, get
told that we must follow it to the letter; some document authors get
riled because they have to use "HE/SHE" when there's a single male
author but we say "We have to do what the ipr wg says, that's the
legal text."

Now, an I-D submission gets rejected because it didn't follow [what we
thought was] one of the strict rules in the document, and an IPR WG
participant comes and complains loudly about that action on the IETF
mailing list, and implies that anyone responsible should have known
that the ipr WG has decided that the copyright only applies to the
boilerplate so it may be illegal for it to say 2006, except that other
participants say that no, it's important for the copyright to cover
the contents and for it to be correct.

I don't know how to get out of this situation [it feels like we're in
two seperate worlds, and I can't figure out how to bridge the gap but
we keep colliding instead], which is why I haven't spoken up in the
year  since I realized this was a problem, but I thought maybe the IPR
WG might find a way in helping.

Harald, elsewhere in the thread, wrote:
>one of my personal goals is to have the rules be written in such a way
>that they minimize surprises, and are so easy to translate into "running
>code" that any IETF participant can check whatever we tell them to check
>and do the Right Thing...

In your vision, are these rules a translation of the process RFCs, or
the process RFCs themselves?  As you might imagine, I applaud the
goal.

  Bill

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 09:15:48 -0800

I think I can tell you how to get out of the situation. Tell the IPR  
WG that they need to produce a document that says what they want said  
and is understandable and actionable by someone who is not a lawyer -  
and document the fact that we did so, so that if any of this ever  
goes to court, we can simply point to the participants of the IPR WG  
and tell the court that the relevant laws and advice are so arcane  
that a reasonable man cannot understand them.

I actually find myself in a similar position vis-à-vis family and  
friends. My mother told me when I was a teenager that when I could  
explain something to her in a way that enabled her to understand it,  
she would know that I understood it. I have taken that to heart, and  
try in things I write to make them understandable. We have all  
complained about IESG members acting like frustrated English  
teachers, requesting nit-picky changes in the quest for clarity, and  
we have an RFC Editor who is supposed to help us in exactly that way.  
The principle applies to the IPR WG as well.

There is no point putting an RFC number on a document that an IETF  
participant cannot understand and put into action.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 14:56:11 +0100

Fred Baker wrote:
> I think I can tell you how to get out of the situation. Tell the IPR  WG 
> that they need to produce a document that says what they want said  and 
> is understandable and actionable by someone who is not a lawyer -  and 
> document the fact that we did so, so that if any of this ever  goes to 
> court, we can simply point to the participants of the IPR WG  and tell 
> the court that the relevant laws and advice are so arcane  that a 
> reasonable man cannot understand them.

I believe we are moving in that direction, with the notion that
the copyright notice in the the RFCs themselves should be as short
as possible and refer to a license text maintained externally by
the IETF Trust.

But I doubt we can ever get away from having a certain amount of
boilerplate in the RFCs (and drafts) and I personally, as an author
or editor, have always taken the view that I will include the
currently required text (and date) verbatim without worrying about
it. XML2RFC has been a boon here and has made life simple. As long
as we keep XML2RFC, 1id-guidlines, idnits, and the Secretariat's
checking tool in step, authors don't have to do anything special.

It's obvious that if and when we formally update RFC 3978,
the tools updates need to be synchronized and announced. But that
emphatically is not a job for this WG.

     Brian

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From: "Bill Fenner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 08:40:24 -0800

Obviously we're on different pages with respect to who should do what,
so I won't try to convince you - but I do want to point something out.

On 3/7/06, Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote:
> As long

This seems like an oversimplification; authors at least have to change
the ipr= attribute in their xml source (or insert the new boilerplate
into their document if they're using something other than xml2rfc). 
There are over 2000 active I-Ds right now, so that means at least 2000
actions [by lots of actors].

When you phrase it as "...don't have to do anything...", that seems
like an invitation to change the boilerplate at will, since it seems
to have no cost.  Most of the community that I've heard from sees
boilerplate checking and changes as an annoyance and wonders why the
IETF leadership is imposing these annoying changes on them.

  Bill

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 16:59:41 +0100

Bill Fenner wrote:
> to have no cost.

Right. What I was getting at is that authors don't have to insert the
boilerplate text themselves and maintain their own copies as it changes.
The effort is limited to using the latest ipr= attribute.

Afaik, users of nroff and proprietary editors do have cut and paste
the actual boilerplate when it changes.

> Most of the community that I've heard from sees

Quite right. I don't think any of the changes have been
capricious, but they are certainly annoying. That's another argument
for externalizing as much of the legal verbiage from the actual
documents as we can.

     Brian