On 4/28/22 13:09, Mukund Sivaraman wrote:
This is the second time in recent years that, in a DNS draft I'd
primarily authored, I've noticed my name was removed from the list of
authors with no prior consultation with the document mostly the same.
I understand that we assign co-copyright to the IETF when publishing
drafts, but it feels unreasonable that after effort is put in writing a
draft, the authorship is completely deleted. In the previous case, I was
moved to "Acknowledgements" without consultation, and in this case my
name has been deleted fully.
New author(s) who want to take over could instead:
* Ask to be co-author(s).
* Say that they'd leave the original author(s) as-is, but that they
would like to have control over the draft's future, and if the old
author(s) don't like it, they may ask to be deleted.
* If content were significantly modified, they could say "This draft is
significantly different from your old draft, and so we'd like to claim
full ownership, is that OK?".
Instead, what happened with both drafts is akin to taking a book that's
mostly written by one author, contributing a few sentences, and deleting
the previous authors' names and calling it your own.
Complete agreement.
It's insulting, offensive, unethical, and dishonest, and may be illegal
in some areas.
The practice should stop immediately. Those responsible should
apologize and the original draft should be restored.
Even if IETF has the right to make derivative works of an Internet-Draft
(assuming that permission was granted), it shouldn't *replace* that
draft when someone forks it. It should also seek to minimize the
potential for confusion between the two documents, and any original
authors should be attributed in the forked draft *as original authors*.
Keith
