Just to elaborate on Pete's response. The reason the rules are set up this way is to account for two problems that have been encountered in the past.
One problem that comes up repeatedly is that someone writes a draft and stops participating in IETF process. In some cases the original author may be unreachable, there may be six authors, some may even have died. It is often completely impractical to revise a draft in those circumstances. So a draft might have to be completely rewritten to make a minor change.
The other issue is that someone writes a proposal, someone else copies the entire proposal with changes the original authors disagree with and submit that with their own names on it. That is not common but has happened to me once, (though in that particular case my name had already dropped off the draft in question for reasons of politics of getting it adopted.)
So the rules give two options for good reason. But for most cases, what we really need is possibly a third option which is closer to a 'moral right' sort of approach. In certain cases I do reserve copyright but what I am really after is a weaker condition which is attribution. I would be quite happy with someone taking one of my drafts and using it as the basis for a new draft provided that there is a prominent notice on the front page (or HTML equivalent) stating that this is a continuation of my draft and acknowledging that while I do not endorse this particular variation, it is built on my work.
That might be something worth considering for the future as part of RFC evolution.
On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 2:10 PM Pete Resnick <resnick@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 28 Apr 2020, at 12:42, Khaled Omar wrote:
> Is this means that anyone can use the contents of the IDs stored at
> the ietf repository !!!!
Anyone who is contributing their work to the standards process can
include derivative works of other items contributed to the standards
process (caveat the information below).
> So what is the copyright text included at the beginning and the end of
> each ID !!!!
It specifically allows for derivative works. See BCP 78 (RFC 5378)
section 5.3.c <https://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp78#section-5.3>. By
including that copyright statement (and not including any other
limitations), the author has granted the right to make those derivative
works.
> Does this includes applying what is included inside the ID without
> contacting the draft authors ?!
Yes. An author is allowed to limit the right to make derivative works
(see section 6 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp78#section-6>, but I do
not see this limitation in draft-omar-nep, which means you have granted
the right to make derivative works to the IETF Trust, and the IETF Trust
grants the right to include derivative works in new contributions to the
standards process to other authors. There is no requirement for
contacting the original draft author.
pr
--
Pete Resnick https://www.episteme.net/
All connections to the world are tenuous at best
