Subject: Bouncing on copyright date

From: "Olaf M. Kolkman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 21:26:50 +0100

Hi all,

Having a draft bounce on copyright notice is probably a little to  
bureaucratic.

There are very little things we can do to drive work and to  
acknowledge the work that editors put into updating draft and  
although a fix of the copyright date is little work it brings  
unneeded frustration and puts people of from doing good work.

I do understand that automation makes life on the other side of the  
fence --- at the the secretariat --- easier and more productive but I  
think this particular bounce is overkill.

--Olaf

> The Secretariat CANNOT process your Internet-Draft submission due to
> following reason(s):
>
>  * All Internet-Drafts must include the following statement:
>
> Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
>

-----------------------------------------------------------
Olaf M. Kolkman
NLnet Labs
http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:48:07 -0800

> think this particular bounce is overkill.

At a meta-level, you have to decide how friendly your SW is going to be. :-)
Since the SW knows the correct copyright, it can either fix the 
incorrect one or reject it.
It is very common for source-code control systems to reject wrong 
copyright formats,
and this is sort of the same thing.  You have to keep running id-nits 
until your draft passes.

I expect the tools will keep evolving over time.  Overall, it's a huge win
that this submission tool is in place.

(Since this is only 1 of 742 nits you have to worry about just
to write an Internet draft these days,
why worry about this one particular case.  ;-)

> --Olaf

Andy

---

From: "Olaf M. Kolkman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 21:58:15 +0100

> At a meta-level, you have to decide how friendly your SW is going  

I see the smiley but I have to say; No no.. on a meta-level you have  
to decide how bureaucratic your organization is going to be.

That is essentially what I am trying to flag with my previous message.

--Olaf

PS I realize that the draft on agenda formats I co-authored has been  
interpreted as being an overly bureaucratic piece of work. :-)... its  
a thin line.

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 17:43:49 -0500

On Monday, January 09, 2006 09:58:15 PM +0100 "Olaf M. Kolkman" 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I see the smiley but I have to say; No no.. on a meta-level you have  to
> decide how bureaucratic your organization is going to be.
>

This isn't a matter of the organization being bureaucratic.
It's not like some person looked at the submission and said "this looks OK, 
but the copyright date is wrong, so I'm going to bounce it out of spite".

The software is very simple.  It checks that certain pieces of text appear 
verbatim in the document.  Note that it didn't say you had the wrong 
message; it doesn't know that.  All it knows is that you did not have the 
right message.

Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to "that feature 
just wasn't worth the time and effort it would have taken to provide it".

-- Jeffrey T. Hutzelman (N3NHS) <[email-masked]>
   Sr. Research Systems Programmer
   School of Computer Science - Research Computing Facility
   Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 00:15:01 +0100

[Andy]
>> At a meta-level, you have to decide how friendly your SW is going  

[Olaf]
> That is essentially what I am trying to flag with my previous message.

I agree.  Both with regards to copyright year, and with respect to the
demand for exact adherence to boilerplate, such as requiring "he or she"
instead of just "she" in the boilerplate of a draft authored by a sole
female author, for instance.

I think some fuzzyness would be better than the current demand to be
letter-perfect in boiler-plate and copyright year -- I find it somehow
de-humanizing that you're not permitted any leeway, and have to include
nonsense legalese, or as in this case, have your draft rejected if (as
seems to be the case here) you happened to produce it just before new
year, but the secretariat looked at it after new year.

It's perfectly possible to both write rules, boiler-plate and conformance-
checking software which permits a bit of leeway and fuzzyness.  It is
a bit more work, though; which just means that it "ain't gonna happen"
unless there is some pressure to fix it.

Even if I'm the one that would have to fix idnits to accept more variation,
I'm firmly on the side of changing/fixing our rules and boilerplate to
be less stiffnecked, and permit some leeway in these matters.

	Henrik

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 18:54:32 -0500

On Tuesday, January 10, 2006 12:15:01 AM +0100 Henrik Levkowetz 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Even if I'm the one that would have to fix idnits to accept more
> variation, I'm firmly on the side of changing/fixing our rules and
> boilerplate to be less stiffnecked, and permit some leeway in these
> matters.

That brings me to the point I forgot to mention in my last message, which 
is that there are also legal and process ramifications here.

The required language has been reviewed and is the subject of an IETF 
consensus.  RFC3967 says "The IETF requires that certain notices and 
disclaimers described in this section 5 be reproduced verbatim in all IETF 
documents".  It doesn't say anything about allowing alternate text that 
might mean the same thing; it says "verbatim".  If you start allowing 
variations, then who is to say how much variation is OK?  Someone could 
make the claim that because Joe was allowed to say "he" instead of "he or 
she", that they should be allowed to say "except any patents I want to keep 
secret" instead of "in accordance with Section 6 of PBC 79".  Sure, that 
would be obviously bogus, but it's a slippery slope.

In most organizations, standard license and contract terms are vetted in 
advance by the organization's lawyers, and once they have been approved, it 
is virtually impossible to get the organization to accept even minor 
variations without the approval of both the lawyers and often an officer. 
That's done to protect the organization; by ensuring it never accepts legal 
terms which have not been subject to appropriate review.

In the IETF, the original language is subject not only to legal review but 
to IETF consensus.  We have a variety of mechanisms by which a process can 
allow an individual or small group such as an AD or the IESG or IAB to make 
an exception; none of those mechanisms were used in this place, nor IMHO 
should they be.  When dealing with legal language, "verbatim" is the right 
standard of comparison, especially mechanical comparison.

As for the comment about making the submission software update the 
copyright language, that runs into other problems.  It would be 
inappropriate for the software to add language which appears to alter the 
copyright status of the text (for example, by claiming an ISOC copyright on 
a document which did not include one).

Changing the year might be fine, except it's not at all clear to me that 
it's OK to say "Copyright 2006" on a document which was produced in 2005.
Of course, by that argument, the submission logic should _not_ reject 
documents because the copyright date is not in the current year.  Note that 
the BCP does not require a specific year or even "the current year".

-- Jeff

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 01:12:40 +0100

> would be obviously bogus, but it's a slippery slope.

Yes, this is known - well, at least it has been mentioned before.  I think
that as far as arbitrary changes like your last example above, they are
clearly not desirable.

However, I think it is nonsense to use this as an excuse to exclude all
variations.  It would be simple to have both lawyers and WG participants
consider variations where at a certain point in the legalese, either
"he or she", "he", or "she" were permitted; either "I" or "we" were
permitted, etc.

> terms which have not been subject to appropriate review.

Sure.  So let's have the appropriate variations vetted.

> standard of comparison, especially mechanical comparison.

I believe de-humanized language is rarely the right choice.  So I don't
buy verbatim adherence to one and only one generalized boilerplate.

> a document which did not include one).

?? I don't know what you're referring to here?  I've not proposed to do
this, and agree that doing any changes to a document during submission
without express approval from the author / submitter is a bad idea.

> documents because the copyright date is not in the current year.

Agreed.

>  Note that 

Not explicitly, no.  Although if I read the text without any machiavellian
interpretation logic turned on, I'd expect that "Copyright (C) The Internet
Society (year)." would actually mean the current year (with some fuzzyness).

	Henrik

---

From: Rohan Mahy <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 16:18:46 -0800

Wading in here....

I really could care less about the date thing.  I had a draft bounced 
for the having the wrong year in the copyright date, but in my case, 
the date was wrong, so I can see why having the date checked 
automatically is useful.  It seems like having the Copyright xxxx year 
be the same as the date in the document would be a good thing.  Then if 
the secretariat wants to say that the draft date has to be within (for 
example) 30 days of when the secretariat processes the draft, I think 
that would be fine.  The response to the submission could then be much 
more useful: "Sorry, you submitted a draft dated 6th January, 2004. 
This draft is too old to be processed.", instead of "Bad boilerplate".  
If the copyright and draft years are inconsistent, idnits can return a 
different error message.

As for the boilerplate text, I believe it should be character exact.  I 
would not even object if idnits rejected boilerplate due to changes in 
whitespace. The whole purpose of boilerplate language is to minimize 
the amount of make work to allow us to continue doing *real* work. 
Boilerplate is *by definition* supposed to be dehumanizing. Whenever 
someone mucks with the boilerplate, we introduce the possibility for 
human error.  The example Henrik provided (changing "he or she" to 
"she") is a great example of where things can go wrong. We add and 
delete editors and authors all the time.  A draft customized can easily 
become legally invalid by adding or switching an author.  Since there 
is no way for a machine to determine the gender of an author, there is 
no way to check that any customized boilerplate accomplishes the legal 
objective which motivated its presence in the first place. Allowing 
customized boilerplate means that I (as a WG chair) have to read this 
crap every time I request publication of a document rather than let a 
tool do the work for me.  I find that even more dehumanizing. I would 
rather spend my time writing human text that humans (as opposed to 
lawyers ;-) will actually read, or reading the content of a draft.

thanks,
-rohan

On Jan 9, 2006, at 15:15, Henrik Levkowetz wrote:
> variation,

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 21:14:27 -0500

> without express approval from the author / submitter is a bad idea.

You didn't propose this; someone else did.

> interpretation logic turned on, I'd expect that "Copyright (C) The
> Internet Society (year)." would actually mean the current year (with some
> fuzzyness).

Well, that's a better interpretation than deciding it means the word 
"year". :-)

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 14:46:19 +0100

> That brings me to the point I forgot to mention in my last message, 
> which is that there are also legal and process ramifications here.
> 
> disclaimers described in this section 5 be reproduced verbatim in all 
> IETF documents".  It doesn't say anything about allowing alternate text 
> that might mean the same thing; it says "verbatim".  

Exactly. So the only question is whether tools (and manual procedures)
should allow a few days wiggle room on this. And we had that debate,
re what is now RFC 4228, and the wiggle room agreed there is 3 days.
(Section 7.5.1, bullet 5).

     Brian

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 09:13:11 +0100

--On 9. januar 2006 18:54 -0500 Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]> wrote:

> advance by the organization's lawyers, and once they have been approved,
> it is virtually impossible to get the organization to accept even minor
> That's done to protect the organization; by ensuring it never accepts
> legal terms which have not been subject to appropriate review.
>
> In the IETF, the original language is subject not only to legal review
> but to IETF consensus.

BTW.... and this is an active discussion item in the IPR WG .... I think 
requiring IETF consensus on changes in boilerplate is a mistake.
We've proved conclusively that changing consensus RFCs quickly is 
just-about-impossible (see the 11-month timelapse between 3668 and the 
"minor fix" 3979).

I think we need to move towards IETF consensus on intent, and IETF 
leadership decision after legal review/signoff on exact boilerplate (with 
the ability to appeal decisions on boilerplate changes, of course).

But that's on-topic for IPR WG, not for wgchairs....

                Harald

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 12:01:19 -0500

In message <517658294558919EE6346A2D@B50854F0A9192E8EC6CDA126>, Harald Tveit Al
vestrand writes:
>--==========2731624FF4A8192E888D==========
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>Content-Disposition: inline
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
>
>
>BTW.... and this is an active discussion item in the IPR WG .... I think=20
>We've proved conclusively that changing consensus RFCs quickly is=20
>just-about-impossible (see the 11-month timelapse between 3668 and the=20
>"minor fix" 3979).
>
>I think we need to move towards IETF consensus on intent, and IETF=20
>leadership decision after legal review/signoff on exact boilerplate (with=20

Right -- though note that this is the opinion of both IPR WG chairs...

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

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 07:21:50 -0800

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> BTW.... and this is an active discussion item in the IPR WG .... I 
> think requiring IETF consensus on changes in boilerplate is a mistake.
> leadership decision after legal review/signoff on exact boilerplate 
> (with the ability to appeal decisions on boilerplate changes, of course).
>

This thread has helped me realize what's been bothering me about
the IETF so much lately.  In most organizations, stuff like boilerplate
and meeting locations are dealt with by specialists in various departments,
and problems are contained. 

In the IETF, every little operational and procedural detail is open to 
endless
debate in a general forum, amongst people with perhaps little or no
particular skills related to the details at hand.

But I think we are on the right track with the tools development.
That's the right approach.  Task skilled people to solve a problem.
Everybody else -- shut up, go away, and use the solution when it's ready.
That's been experience in the corporate world anyway, and it
seems to work.

Andy

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 16:36:40 +0100

> That's been experience in the corporate world anyway, and it

Andy, we indeed have specialist places for discussion (such as the IPR WG
in this case) and for drafting (such as our lawyer in this case) but given
the nature of the IETF, we do need to validate decisions in wider fora -
this one or the main IETF list - if they have IETF-wide impact. I hesitate
to send "shut up, please" messages in the IETF, but indeed it isn't
clear why people sometimes want to grind through details on large
lists.

    Brian