On 17-Oct-21 12:49, Michael Richardson wrote: > > Joel M. Halpern <jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Just make a copy might work if we have the legal right to do so. (There are > > other complications, but they pale beside this one. In the case of IEEE > > specs that Michael Richardson has been talking about, we do NOT have a right > > to make a copy and give it away.) > > For anything that has an archive.org copy, we could use that. > > IEEE makes ure that archive.org can't archive their stuff. > If I have this right (and Scott Bradner will probably correct me if I'm wrong), the basic rules in RFC2026 section 7.1.1 recognize the reality that some open standards are essential and unavoidable references which are not available free of charge to the general public. To be clear, the phrase "open standard" in that section doesn't mean "free of charge". (Long essay on what it *does* mean elided.) (IEEE 802 and numerous CCITT Recommendations were the original problem cases, I think, and that was about hard copies, of course.) Wherever possible we try to avoid dependency on such references, but when you can't, there really isn't any choice. Brian
