Sam, et al, There are so many things tied up in this, that I am afraid it is bound to turn into a rat-hole. For one thing, I thought Russ was talking about the complication that arise from whether or not the BCP 78/79 stuff applies to people who made some contribution but are not listed as "Authors". I may have missed his point, but this probably is an issue as there are other things in IPR than "copyrights". For another, there is a clear distinction between attribution and being listed as an author. Most drafts I've seen acknowledge the people making contributions. Also, RFCs are not (at least usually) a compilation of related works by separate authors. An RFC typically requires some unification and typically this is performed by one or more editors. Because of churn-and-merge complexity, it is usually the case that there is only one "editor" at any given moment, and the list of "token holders" is both well defined and small - consequently is is quite reasonable to ask that a long list of authors be replaced by a shorter list of the people who actually took turns as editors. I think the biggest issue is that the RFC Editor has established guidelines that use a fixed number. This can lead to rather arbitrary decisions about who is an editor, author or contributor. Probably a better approach would be to explicitly define what the RFC Editor means by the terms contributor, author, editor and - perhaps - something even more specific that that (e.g. - final editor?) and then saying that some number of names MAY be listed on the first page and that the approach to determining what names should be included is to pick the category that has no more than that many in the list. I was pretty much under the impression that this is the informal approach used now. -- Eric --> -----Original Message----- --> From: Sam Hartman [mailto:hartmans-ietf@xxxxxxx] --> Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:06 PM --> To: Russ Housley --> Cc: rfc-editor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; ietf@xxxxxxxx; --> techspec@xxxxxxxx; ipr-wg@xxxxxxxx --> Subject: Re: RFC Author Count and IPR --> --> >>>>> "Russ" == Russ Housley <housley@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: --> --> Russ> I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that --> Russ> limits the number of authors is in conflict with the IETF --> Russ> IPR policies. The RFC Editor currently limits the author --> Russ> count to five people. Recent IPR WG discussions make it --> Russ> clear to me that authors retain significant copyright. --> --> [There is this concept in US copyright law called a joint work. I'm --> ignoring that concept for the moment basically because I don't --> understand how it applies to either software or text developed using --> an open process. As far as I can tell, no one else understands it --> either. Please be aware that this may be a huge gap in my advice.] --> --> So, here we have a conflicting definitions problem. --> --> The author of a work retains the copyright interest. That's true if --> if I'm listed as an author or not. --> --> If I write text and do not assign the copyright to someone, I retain --> copyright interest in that text. --> --> So the sixth person still owns the copyright interest in --> the text they --> write even if they are not listed. --> --> That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed --> significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to --> do anything interesting with that text. --> --> _______________________________________________ --> Ietf mailing list --> Ietf@xxxxxxxx --> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf --> _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf