>So my answer to Sam's question is: I dare anyone to try and stop you >or me from taking an IETF RFC and revising it as necessary to express >any new idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, >concept, principle, or discovery. And I dare anyone to try and stop >IETF or any other standards organization from adopting such an >improvement as a revised RFC because of a copyright notice. You are probably right that the combination of the broad formal and informal license that people have given for RFCs and the thin copyright protection on descriptive technical documents would mean that even if a disgruntled author of an old RFC sued to prevent his words from being adapted in a new RFC, he'd eventually lose. But I sure don't want to pay for the lawsuit to find out. The only way I can currently see out of this mess is for the IETF or the IETF Trust to take it upon itself to get new licenses from as many old authors or their heirs as it can. Regards, John Levine, johnl@xxxxxxxx, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf