Subject: Anonymous RFCs (was RE: Formalizing Design Teams)

From: Eastlake III Donald-LDE008 <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 15:59:36 -0500

There are problems here.

Consider individual submissions, what sense would it be for them to be
anonymous? And there is really a sort of spectrum from individual sub-
missions that become Informational or Experimental to individual sub-
missions that get blessed as standards or BCP by the IESG to WG documents
that were written/edited almost in their entirety by one person, to WG
document that were edited/coordinated by one person with pieces of text
written by many.

Then there are the copyright questions. Currently the IETF does not take
exclusive rights. Listing editors/authors/contributors makes it clear who
else has concurrent rights in all or some of the document. And under the
moral rights laws of many countries, authors might have a legal right to
require their name to appear somewhere on the document.

All things considered, I think the current arrangement works well enough
and changes to try to make RFCs anonymous are problematic.

Donald

-----Original Message-----
From: James Luciani [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2002 3:35 PM
To: Eastlake III Donald-LDE008; [email-masked]
Subject: RE: Formalizing Design Teams

I suppose it is too radical to suggest that names (except thank yous) are
not placed on RFCs at all? During draft, it is necessary to find "editor"
though.  And if anyone "REALLY" needs to talk with the editor after RFC then
I am sure there are archives to check on such things.

---

From: "James Luciani" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 16:14:22 -0500

> There are problems here.

The first sentence of the suggestion said, "except during draft stage".
Other than that, what value does having names serve since there are always
archives etc if you need to get in touch.

> document that were edited/coordinated by one person with pieces of text

I find this argument a tad hard to accept since some of the people who
worked on the draft are currently having their names removed at IESG last
call.  LIke I said, put their names in the thank you section if you need
their name there.