Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary

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Hi -

> From: "Dave CROCKER" <dhc2@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "John C Klensin" <john-ietf@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: "IETF discussion list" <ietf@xxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 1:05 PM
> Subject: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
...
> That is:  Working groups are part of the IETF and 'authors' of working group 
> documents are acting as  when writing IETF documents.agents of the IETF.  While 

I assume the missing word is "editors"

> there might be underlying intellectual property owned by the companies that 
> authors work for, the actual document is commissioned by, and copyright should 
> be owned by, the IETF.

AMEN!
 
> Let me carry it further:  When Erik Huizer and I wrote the first IETF Working 
> Group Guidelines document, it was at our initiative.  (Well, really, Erik's.) 
> When it was adopted by the IETF, I automatically assumed that the IETF owned it.

That has always been my understanding regarding work I've done for the IETF.
 
> That is, after all, what we assert when outside technology is brought into the 
> IETF and we insist that they are handing over "change control". What is change 
> control if not the authority to make changes to the document?

Yup.
 
> So when Scott Bradner did the revision to the IETF Working Group Guidelines 
> document the idea that he had a legal obligation to get our permission would 
> have -- and certainly now does -- strike me as silly.

Particularly since the permission to create derivative works and successor
standards has been granted as part of the boilerplate for a long long time.
 
> That's me talking as a participant, about pragmatics, not me pretending to be a 
> attorney, talking about copyright law.

Ditto.  Consequently, as a WG co-chair who wants his WG to finish up 
in this century, I read RFC 5378 section 5.3 as giving working
groups what they need so they can ignore all this stuff about tracking
down long-gone contributors, and that it's merely a re-incarnation of what
has long been the intent behind the NOTE WELL text.

One can easily imagine a situation in which a disgruntled party named
as a contributor in an early version of work might refuse to give permission
under some readings of an RFC 5378 regime, effectively killing the work.
As John says, paraphrase is *not* a realistic option, especially with carefully-crafted
WG compromise text.

Randy

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