Subject: 5378 Procedures Fix

From: Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:22:39 -0400

Brian & Harald

I have heartburn with the proposed 'fix' to the pre-5378 problem.  It  
has to to with the level of effort
by Contributors and record keeping required to implement the fix.

2.  Procedure

    Definition: In this document, the phrase "prior to RFC 5378" refers
    to IETF Contributions made before November 10, 2008, when [RFC5378]
    became effective.

    Contributors of Internet-Drafts that contain substantial text
    originally contributed to the IETF by other persons prior to RFC  
5378
    have certain responsibilities.

    o  They must identify the source of the substantial text that their
       contribution includes.

I agree with this.  The Trust cannot grant the license to a 3rd party  
without being able to identify the
5378 licensors and the Contributors are in the best position to  
identify the sources.

    o  They, or people helping them, must make reasonable efforts to
       obtain or verify the agreement of the original contributors to
       their text being contributed under the terms of RFC 5378.

I disagree with this.  Of the last 5,000 plus RFCs I understand there  
have been fewer than 5 occasions
when the IETF has provided the right to modify an RFC outside the IETF  
standards process.  I would shift the
burden to the Trust to 'make reasonable efforts to obtain or verify  
the agreement of the original contributors to
their text being contributed under the terms of RFC 5378', rather than  
have the Contributors do it, on an as-needed basis.
If the Contributors have to do it, it will result in hard or soft copy  
licenses to be provided to the Trust on a document by document basis
or the Trust will wind up soliciting broadly for licenses, perhaps  
even setting up an online 5378 License Registry for
the 11,000 plus authors, and/or n # of companies of the 5,000 RFCs.   
Whether the Contributors do it and or the Trust, it is
way too much effort to meet the requirement for an occasional request.

    o  If such agreement cannot be obtained within a reasonable time,
       they must instead include a special disclaimer in the Internet-
       Draft.  The current text of the disclaimer will be specified by
       the IETF Trust's "Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents",
       originally located at
       <http://trustee.ietf.org/policyandprocedures.html>.  The initial
       version of this text is in Appendix A below.

The Contributor should just include the provision as a matter of  
course, unless they meet exceptions
defined in the "Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents".

    o  In either case, the Internet-Draft must contain acknowledgement
       and precise citation of the contributions concerned.  If the
       disclaimer is included, the acknowledgement should also identify
       which previous contributors contributed which text, unless the
       text concerned is scattered throughout the document.

Concur.

    Before approving a document containing material originally
    contributed to the IETF prior to RFC 5378, for which permission to
    contribute it under RFC 5378 has not been obtained, the IESG must be
    satisfied that reasonable effort has been made to obtain the
    necessary rights.

I would delete as unnecessary if changed as suggested.

If such is the case, the resulting document, and
    any IETF Last Call message concerning the document, must contain the
    special disclaimer and acknowledgement defined above.

The IESG should ensure the pre-5378 material has been properly  
identified
and that the document contains the 'special disclaimer and  
acknowledgement
defined above'.

    The IESG and the IETF Trust, in collaboration, must provide a public
    register of documents prior to RFC 5378 for which the rights  
required
    by RFC 5378 have been provided retroactively, and a public register
    of rights holders who have retroactively provided such rights for  
all
    their IETF contributions prior to RFC 5378.

Clearly the 5378 rights as and when requested by the IETF Trust and  
granted
by the authors must be publicly disclosed.

    The IETF Trust is requested to ensure that its policies and licenses
    allow for documents including the disclaimer.

Concur

Ray Pelletier
Taking off my Trustee and IAD hats.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:54:12 +1300

Ray,

Firstly, yes, that is a valid point to discuss: do we want to require
a reasonable effort from authors, or do we want the disclaimer to be
used by default? Let's have that discussion in the BOF.

Secondly, I have running code to report. In draft-carpenter-renum-needs-work
we use substantial material from draft-chown-v6ops-renumber-thinkabout-05,
published in 2006. I went through the process of sending email to its
authors, asking for their agreement to post the material under RFC5378
conditions, and they all replied positively within a few days. The effort
was trivial, compared to the other work to produce the draft. So I assert
that a reasonable effort is in fact... reasonable, and avoids the distraction
caused by the disclaimer.

   Brian

On 2009-03-12 10:22, Ray Pelletier wrote:
>    originally contributed to the IETF by other persons prior to RFC 5378
> 5378 licensors and the Contributors are in the best position to identify
> the sources.
> 
> burden to the Trust to 'make reasonable efforts to obtain or verify the
> agreement of the original contributors to
> or the Trust will wind up soliciting broadly for licenses, perhaps even
> setting up an online 5378 License Registry for
> The Contributor should just include the provision as a matter of course,
> unless they meet exceptions
> The IESG should ensure the pre-5378 material has been properly identified
> and that the document contains the 'special disclaimer and acknowledgement
> defined above'.
> 
> 
>    register of documents prior to RFC 5378 for which the rights required
>    of rights holders who have retroactively provided such rights for all
> Clearly the 5378 rights as and when requested by the IETF Trust and granted

---

From: Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:50:25 -0400

> caused by the disclaimer.

Given that the likelihood is less than 1% that the document will ever  
be requested to be
modified outside the IETF Standard Process, even this amount of time  
multiplied by
hundreds doing the same is disproportionate to the benefit.

A distraction to adding the notice almost whenever pre-5378 material  
is used?

I reviewed draft-carpenter-renum-needs-work and found

10.  Acknowledgements

    Significant amounts of text have been adapted from
    [I-D.chown-v6ops-renumber-thinkabout].  The authors of that draft
    have agreed to their text being submitted under the IETF's current
    copyright provisions.

Meaning, I assume, that the authors have provided a 5378 license in  
their document
to the IETF Trust.  Such license of course could be used by others for  
their docs.

What is the process by which these licenses are to be identified and  
recorded?
In other words how do we get from an Acknowledgment to an online 5378  
License Registry?

Ray
>> identify
>> the
>> even

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:18:55 -0400

--On Thursday, March 12, 2009 10:54 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Ray,
> 
> Firstly, yes, that is a valid point to discuss: do we want to
> require a reasonable effort from authors, or do we want the
> disclaimer to be used by default? Let's have that discussion
> in the BOF.

Brian,

Your impressions may obviously be different, but my perception
of the lengthy discussion on the IETF list was that:

-- the community had concluded that requiring authors to make
assertions about the rights, contributions, and perceptions of
others was unreasonable and that imposing any other requirements
that would add to the burden or liabilities of being an author
was not in the community's best interests.  Certainly, we might
encourage authors (and WG Chairs, ADs, and interested
volunteers) who had the time and inclination to track down
others and encourage them to sign off, but requiring that was
unreasonable and requiring any assertions about non-listed
authors (or non-listed contributors) was not acceptable.

-- that discussion was community-wide and reasonably informed
about the issues by the time it ended and consequently trumps
any conclusions the WG reached consensus on, or was claimed to
have reached consensus on, and hence makes any debate about what
the WG did or did not decide or believe about that specific
subject irrelevant.

> Secondly, I have running code to report. In
> draft-carpenter-renum-needs-work we use substantial material
> from draft-chown-v6ops-renumber-thinkabout-05, published in
> 2006. I went through the process of sending email to its
> authors, asking for their agreement to post the material under
> RFC5378 conditions, and they all replied positively within a
> few days. The effort was trivial, compared to the other work
> to produce the draft. So I assert that a reasonable effort is
> in fact... reasonable, and avoids the distraction caused by
> the disclaimer.

But you presumably did not track down and get agreement from all
of the non-listed individuals who might believe they were
Contributors, nor did you identify them, nor did you make a
legally-binding assertion that no such people existed.  Is that
correct?

The point above, also consistent with my understanding of the
earlier IETF List discussion and conclusions, is that one cannot
have both the very broad definition of Contributor in 5378 and
its predecessors and the Note Well _and_ a trust in the
assumption that only listed authors count.

    john

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:44:44 +1300

John,

On 2009-03-12 12:18, John C Klensin wrote:
> others was unreasonable 

Certainly, if anything other than documented facts are concerned,
that is obviously unreasonable and I agree that is the consensus.

> and that imposing any other requirements
> unreasonable 

That isn't clear to me as the consensus. But of course the way to
test that is to have a draft that says one thing or the other,
and test consensus on that draft in the usual way. As the draft
is written, that's really a must/should/may discussion.

> and requiring any assertions about non-listed

Agreed. But of course there is always, as for 'fair use'
provisions, some wiggle room about that. The draft addresses
"substantial text originally contributed to the IETF by other
persons" because we assume that non-substantial extracts
simply aren't an issue.

> the WG did or did not decide or believe about that specific

Yes, but I don't think that affects our draft.

> legally-binding assertion that no such people existed.  Is that

Correct. And the legal implications of not having done that don't
cause me to lose any sleep.

> assumption that only listed authors count.

That's logically true. Acknowledged contributors count just as
much as authors, in the way our draft is phrased. Unacknowledged
contributors are going to be missed in any case. There's not much
to be done about that.

    Brian

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:54:03 +1300

On 2009-03-12 11:50, Ray Pelletier wrote:
...
> to the IETF Trust.  Such license of course could be used by others for

Meaning that I have email from them saying "go ahead". Given that IETF
contributions mainly occur on-line, that is enough for me to feel confident
in applying RFC5378 boilerplate.

I'd be happy to learn that they've also signed a 5378 license, as
I asked them to, but it doesn't really matter to me.

> In other words how do we get from an Acknowledgment to an online 5378

Well, how about making a generic 5378 license sign-up an option when
either submitting an I-D or registering for an IETF meeting? After a few months,
you'd capture most current active contributors that way. And an email sweep
of all RFC authors would capture some more (and a lot of bounce messages).

We do need to get away from ink signatures though.

   Brian

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:17:00 +0100

> the WG did or did not decide or believe about that specific
That's why I've been insisting that the draft shouldn't say that the 
editors make the effort. I'm also fond of doing post-publication effort, 
since by then it's easier to share the load.

SOMEONE will need to do at least some effort, or we'll be left with another

> legally-binding assertion that no such people existed.  Is that
That's the reason why I've been so insistent that an author/editor 
identifies which contributions he's copying from - he's the only one who 
CAN know that, and unless he records it, that information is lost.
> assumption that only listed authors count.
That dichtonomy is the reason why I've been so anxious to see if we can 
find a reasonable legal theory under which the listed author of the last 
version has the right to license the whole work as it stands.

In all of recorded IETF history, we've acted as if such a legal theory 
exists whenever the question of needing permission from document authors 
came up - saying "go ask the authors for permission" is an implicit 
statement that this is enough.

              Harald

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:17:53 -0400

--On Thursday, March 12, 2009 15:44 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> earlier IETF List discussion and conclusions, is that one
>> cannot have both the very broad definition of Contributor in
>> 5378 and its predecessors and the Note Well _and_ a trust in
>> the assumption that only listed authors count.
> 
> much as authors, in the way our draft is phrased.
> Unacknowledged contributors are going to be missed in any
> case. There's not much to be done about that.

While there isn't much to be done about it, the problem remains.
First, there has never been complete alignment between the 5378
and predecessor requirement for acknowledgment and the RFC
Editor's style rules about acknowledgment and listings of
authors and contributors.  However theoretical it may be, there
may always be someone out there who has a more or less strong
claim to being a contributor who is not listed.  The question
then is whether the author is going to be required to assume the
liability if that occurs.

   john

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:42:56 -0400

--On Thursday, March 12, 2009 15:54 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> Well, how about making a generic 5378 license sign-up an
> option when either submitting an I-D or registering for an
> IETF meeting? After a few months, you'd capture most current
> active contributors that way. And an email sweep of all RFC
> authors would capture some more (and a lot of bounce messages).

Except for those who couldn't commit on work done for prior
employers, some of whom might have strong opinions on the
subject (or who might have gone out of business and had their
assets sold to companies whose opinions are unknown).   For
those situations, one would need an extremely nuanced statement,
probably one nuanced enough to end up saying nothing.

Again:

Our principal goal should be to get effective documents that the
IETF can use written efficiently.    Any other goals, including
transfers of rights to the Trust and things that the Trust might
want to let third parties do (as outlined in 5377 or otherwise)
have to be subsidiary to that.

That has at least two corollaries:

-- Anything done to acquire 5378 rights needs to be
non-intrusive.  If declining to grant those rights (for any
reason), becomes time-consuming or painful, then it is probably
a bad idea.   For example, I'd object to clicking "submit" in
the automatic I-D submission tool sequence and having to deal
with a Note Well page that asks that I agree to additional
rights transfer or assertion before continuing to get the draft
into the queue.

-- We should not expect authors to make assertions or
commitments on behalf of anyone other than themselves and
current employers, nor to assume whatever theoretical or
practical liabilities might arise from doing so.  That
constraint applies not just to former employers whose agreement
may be difficult to obtain but to people who think they are
Contributors whether they are explicitly listed or not.    If
authors want to make those commitments, that is fine, but we
should not push people in that direction unless the IETF Trust
is willing to indemnify people against bad consequences of their
well-intentioned and good faith actions and agreements.

-- The one assertion we _can_ expect people to be able to make
is that there is no material in a given document that originated
before 10 November on the assumption that the Note Well covers
everything else (modulo my often-repeated concerns that the lack
of explicit, serious-efforts, notification and even a modified
Note Well until much later makes the 10 November date
meaningless in practice).  But that is almost exactly what the
current "with or without workaround" situation gives on.

    john

---

From: Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:12:31 -0400

> On 2009-03-12 11:50, Ray Pelletier wrote:
<snip>
> of all RFC authors would capture some more (and a lot of bounce  

Why do that?  What is the problem we are trying to solve? I understand  
it is that the IETF wants to permit, when appropriate,
modifications of IETF documents by a 3rd party outside the IETF  
standards process.  I have been told that has happened
once in 5000+ RFCs.

It is proposed we set up an apparatus to capture a 5378 license grant  
from the authors of the pre-5378 contributions, some 11,000 authors,
for the 1/5,000th chance that an IETF document may be provided to a  
3rd party for modification?

Rather than do that let the IETF Trust work with the 3rd party to  
obtain the necessary licenses when the appropriate
occasion arises.

Ray
no hats

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:02:57 -0400

Excerpts from Ray Pelletier on Wed, Mar 11, 2009 05:22:39PM -0400:
> I disagree with this.  Of the last 5,000 plus RFCs I understand
> there  have been fewer than 5 occasions when the IETF has provided
> the right to modify an RFC outside the IETF  standards process.  I
> would shift the burden to the Trust to 'make reasonable efforts to
> obtain or verify the agreement of the original contributors to their
> text being contributed under the terms of RFC 5378', rather than

This is an interesting idea.  Or even better, push it outside.  I'm
being a little impatient here but I've been taught to ask who has the
problem here, really?  It's the people who want to use the work
outside of the IETF.  "ipr=pre5378Trust200902" already leans that way,
but perhaps "ipr=pre5378Trust200904" could generate an additional more
explicit sentence like "anyone who wants to use this material needs to
ascertain for themselves its copyright status, since neither the
authors nor the IETF guarantee it."

Excerpts from Ray Pelletier on Thu, Mar 12, 2009 02:12:31PM -0400:
> obtain the necessary licenses when the appropriate occasion arises.

Sure.

Scott

---

From: TSG <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:45:37 -0700

Scott Brim wrote:

Scott-
The simplest solution is a statement "that the IETF bears no 
responsibility for the IP licensing and that all of the relying parties 
are responsible to do their own diligence" and this would include the 
parties implementing the interoperability verification ports and the 
test-plan for proving that interoperability.

But hey - this simple change also probably makes the Trust totally 
unnecessary IMHO too, so its likely that those who's professional 
careers are tied to servicing the IETF process wont be to happy about 
this idea.

Todd Glassey
> _______________________________________________
> Ipr-wg mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg
>
>

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:13:00 +1300

On 2009-03-13 08:02, Scott Brim wrote:
...
> outside of the IETF.  

That's correct, and it's quite clear that ultimately there is no
way out of that. However, the case made during the IPR WG discussions
was that it isn't just the 1 in a thousand case of handing off a standard
to another SDO that matters. It's any case where a 3rd party wants to
use text for any purpose, such as commenting a piece of code or
writing a product manual. That's why, IMHO, a reasonable effort as
described in draft-carpenter-5378-old-text is a reasonable thing to
require. To my mind that is the main discussion point here.

   Brian

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:24:16 -0400

Except that the lawyers have concluded that the earlier rules were 
sufficient for us to allow code usage as described in 5377.
So that can not be the reason for doing 5378.
Joel

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:30:52 +1300

Joel,

I carefully didn't say "code". I said "text".

    Brian

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:00:34 -0400

--On Friday, March 13, 2009 10:13 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> This is an interesting idea.  Or even better, push it
>> outside.  I'm being a little impatient here but I've been
>> taught to ask who has the problem here, really?  It's the
>> people who want to use the work outside of the IETF.  
> 
> That's correct, and it's quite clear that ultimately there is
> no way out of that. However, the case made during the IPR WG
> discussions was that it isn't just the 1 in a thousand case of
> handing off a standard to another SDO that matters. It's any
> case where a 3rd party wants to use text for any purpose, such
> as commenting a piece of code or writing a product manual.
> That's why, IMHO, a reasonable effort as described in
> draft-carpenter-5378-old-text is a reasonable thing to

Brian,

In the hope of clarifying and perhaps providing a basis for
moving forward...

(1) I am a lot more concerned about the "other SDO" case than I
am about commenting code and I am more concerned about
commenting code than about writing product manuals.  The first
case is, as Ray points out, a 1 in 5000 situation and, fwiw, I
believe there is an alternate solution.   For most of the
product manual cases, I'd actually prefer that people
paraphrase, assert conformance, and point to the real spec.
Most of the places where people "need" to use modified excerpts
of RFC text are going to involve non-conforming cases that are
"nearly-like" IETF specs.  Whether the IETF and the Trustees
want to authorize that or not, I don't see it as important
enough _to the IETF_ to justify requiring extra work from
authors or requiring that they assume extra liability.  I think
that leaves some edge cases, but their magnitude, while larger
that that 1/5000 still does not, IMO, justify passing extra
burdens onto every author of every document.

(2) The WG clearly asked for a higher level of effort than I'm
anticipating.  As I said in an earlier note, I believe that the
discussions on the IETF list override that decision, whether the
WG still believes in its earlier decision or not.  And I believe
that it may not.

(3) My primary concern remains the problem of asking authors to
assume liability for things that they don't know and don't have
much control over.  While I've actually done it for one or two
of the documents I've worked on, I don't want to put authors
into the position where they have to explicitly track the origin
of every sentence (or even every paragraph) of documents.  I
don't want them to have a assume responsibility for the
positions of path employers, co-authors, etc., or liability for
that responsibility.  I don't want to insist that authors try to
contact past employers to obtain additional rights from them
when the relationships with those employers may be perceived as
difficult.

Now, if the WG really still wants to push authors in this
direction (and is convinced that it can persuade the IETF on
another last call), I could live with some sort of three-way
split at the discretion of the posting author (I am deliberately
not suggesting wording that would be suitable for incorporating
in boilerplate... that is a legal problem to be sorted out by
lawyers if we can agree on the concepts).

	(i) I've got all of the relevant rights that 5378
	requests and give them to the IETF Trust as it specifies.
	
	(ii) I've made a best-effort attempt to obtain the
	rights consistent with the intent of 5378 and am giving
	what I have gotten to the IETF Trust.  I believe, in
	good faith, that the rights I've gotten are all that is
	needed, but, if they turn out not to be, I'm making no
	guarantees and assuming no liability, i.e., if the IETF
	Trust decides to treat rights to this document as
	belonging to them under 5378, it is on their heads (or
	anyone's head they pass the risk onto), not mine.
	
	(iii) I'm actually pretty sure that I don't have all of
	the needed rights, either because I tried to get them
	and failed or because I have reason to believe that
	there may be Contributors who have not been identified.
	I'm transferring my own rights under 5378, but anything
	else is covered by a disclaimer equivalent to the
	workaround text.

As usual, there are edge cases in which the author may have
obtained most of the rights needed but _still_ believe that
there are some plausible claimants out there (or may have gotten
one rejection when the request was made).  I do not believe
those situations should lead to a demand that submitting authors
identify every Contributor, their contributions, and the status
of their rights grants to the IETF -- that would just be too
burdensome for its value.   It is partially consideration of
those mixed cases --something that the WG never, as least as far
as I can remember, actively considered-- that leads me to
believe that the original conclusion was incorrect, i.e., that
the responsibilities for going around gathering up releases and
licenses and then guaranteeing that everything had been found
should be transferred to authors as a condition for document
posting.

    john

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:45:28 +1300

John,

On 2009-03-13 11:00, John C Klensin wrote:
...
> should be transferred to authors as a condition for document

We largely agree. The idea that authors/editors can reasonably
be expected to give such a guarantee is untenable in the general
case. The issue seems to be whether they (and as Harald rightly
insists, persons helping them) can reasonably be expected to do
so in straightforward cases, or whether we just forget about
it and stick a red flag on any draft containing old material.

    Brian

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:49:28 -0400

> it and stick a red flag on any draft containing old material.

My suggestion would be that it is sensible to start off asking for a  
reasonable effort. It
should rapidly become apparent whether this is more trouble than it is  
worth.

Regards
Marshall

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:30:49 -0400

And 5378 did not change the text rights we give people in general.  Yes, 
it changes the rights we can give people.  But it does not change the 
rights that we normally give.  They can extract, but not modify.

There was no discussion that I recall in the WG, other than the transfer 
of document maintenance, of wanting to grant third parties additional 
rights to the text of the document.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:50:52 +1300

Quite correct, but the issue is getting uniform rights for new
and recycled text. What the Trust does with those rights is
another matter entirely.

     Brian

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:41:37 -0400

--On Thursday, March 12, 2009 21:49 -0400 Marshall Eubanks
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> be expected to give such a guarantee is untenable in the
>> general case. The issue seems to be whether they (and as
>> Harald rightly insists, persons helping them) can reasonably
>> be expected to do so in straightforward cases, or whether we
>> just forget about it and stick a red flag on any draft
>> containing old material.

I suggest that, for WG-produced materials, the cases that are
really straightforward may be few enough to not be worth
defining an extra case.  The situation may well be different for
independent and individual submissions.  But, having spent a lot
of time in recent years playing WG document editor/author and
editor/author of collective, multi-author works, text comes from
all over the place, it is very hard to remember how much was
significantly rewritten (retaining the original ideas but not
any of the original text or phrasing) and how much might contain
enough of the original to justify some copyright-based
attention.  

I just did a count on my own more-or-less technical RFCs in the
last five years and got three whose authorship/contributors I
could positively identify (two of those were independent
submissions) and probably find and twelve where I could not do
so with any confidence (for two of those, I'm absolutely certain
that I cannot find and get releases from one or more of those
from which they might be necessary).   I don't know if that 4:1
ratio for all of those documents (and 12:1 when only IETF or
IAB-track documents are considered) is typical but, if the ratio
is no better than that, I am not convinced that cluttering up
the world with additional cases is worth it.

Of course, if you add to the "straightforward" category
documents that people are willing to sign off on the model that
the odds of anyone actually coming after them are non-existent,
the category gets better.  On the other hand, if we actually
believe that well enough to encourage people to make that
assumption, we could probably dispense with the extra 5378
rights entirely, let the Trustees get whatever they get (whether
3978 language or 5378 language with or without disclaimers,
grant whatever rights they want to grant on the theory that no
one will ever challenge them, and we can go merrily on our way.

> My suggestion would be that it is sensible to start off asking
> for a reasonable effort. It
> should rapidly become apparent whether this is more trouble
> than it is worth.

My hypothesis is that the IETF is in for hard times as the
economy deteriorates, times in which people are pressed to make
IETF work as small a fraction of their jobs as possible
consistent with getting the IETF work done.  While they are
anecdotal, I've heard several stories of cutbacks, increased
pressure, and even lost positions in organizations that were
once very supportive of the IETF.  Against that backdrop, the
difference between "not absolutely necessary" and "not
reasonable" may become very small.  Put differently, if we
require some level of effort in hunting down prior authors and
Contributors and that costs us a single person in the critical
path for some piece of work who concludes, or whose organization
concludes, that it just makes document editing too burdensome,
then we will have shot a pretty big hole in our virtual feet.

    john

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:48:06 -0700

>believe there is an alternate solution.   For most of the

At the time of this writing, there are approximately 5487 RFCs.  If 
the situation is as Ray pointed out, that's one case over the last 39 years.

>should rapidly become apparent whether this is more trouble than it is

That sounds reasonable as long as people know what they are signing 
up for.  There's the usual discussion about whether acquiring rights 
includes authors and contributors.  Then there's the subjective 
concept some people refer to as "fair use".  As long as the IETF 
Trust can provide clear guidelines about all that, they can ask for the effort.

I noticed that some authors don't even know whether the "may contain 
material from IETF Documents or IETF Contributions published or made 
publicly available before November 10, 2008" should be in the "Status 
of This Memo" section or in the "Copyright Notice" section.  Before 
getting into such an effort, think about how to communicate the 
expectations clearly.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:38:17 +0100

Joel M. Halpern skrev:
> And 5378 did not change the text rights we give people in general.  
> Yes, it changes the rights we can give people.  But it does not change 
> the rights that we normally give.  They can extract, but not modify.
>
> There was no discussion that I recall in the WG, other than the 
> transfer of document maintenance, of wanting to grant third parties 
> additional rights to the text of the document.
there was a million tons of *discussion*, but not an iota of 
*consensus*, for granting more rights in the text.

Note for the nitpickers - under some interpretations, the right to quote 
given in the current regime (any chunk, any size, with attribution) is 
more liberal than what was granted in pre-5378 days. But I believe this 
is a case of "the documents now say what most people thought they were 
saying before".

                      Harald