--On Wednesday, 17 December, 2008 12:31 -0500 Sam Hartman
<hartmans-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>> "Dave" == Dave CROCKER <dhc2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> Dave> Joel M. Halpern wrote:
> >> Yes, having to get rights from folks is a pain.
>
>
> Dave> When the person is not longer available, the effect
> is more Dave> than discomfort.
>
>
> Strictly speaking, that's not actually true. We're talking
> about copyright here; you can rewrite the ideas in your own
> words and avoid needing to worry about rights. Rewriting some
> ideas in your own words might involve some significant
> discomfort, but it is doable.
Well, sort of. Let me return to my current favorite example.
My (very) crude estimate is that RFC 5321 is about 20% Jon
Postel's text. It is a 90-ish page document, so that is 15+
pages (my arithmetic isn't bad, I'm making some guesses about
boilerplate, table of contents, etc.), not a few paragraphs to
be rewritten. In addition, the DRUMS WG that was responsible
for 2821 and the mailing list that was responsible for 5321
repeatedly made decisions to not make unnecessary textual
changes for fear or making subtle errors. The judgment about
the risks associated with rewrites is the sort of technical
judgment that WGs are expected to make; it isn't a copyright
matter. I assume they would be similarly resistant to
rewriting that much text into my own words.
The bottom line is that, for many documents, the plausible
choices aren't between "incur a little pain" and "rewrite text
into one's own words". They are between "obtain releases that
are nearly impossible to obtain without investments of
considerable time, money, and other resources" and "abandon
document".
That is going to leave individual authors, and the IETF, with a
decision about whether the universal implementation of RFC 5378
is important enough to not advance or revise some documents. I
don't think so. I don't even like the idea of having to make
that choice. YMMD
john
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