Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: The IETF Trustees invite your review and comments on a proposed Work-Around to the Pre-5378 Problem

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At 11:58 PM 1/20/2009, Dean Willis wrote:





Given that we've historically weeded out the contributor-list on a
document to "four or less", even if there were really dozens of
"contributors" at the alleged insistence of the RFC Editor, I don't
see how any older document or even a majority of new documents-in- progress could be adapted to the new rules.


Whoa! This contains several errors of fact and implication. The number authors named on the front page of an RFC are generally limited to 5 (there are occasional exceptions for
good cause).  This rule was arrived at after discussions in
the IETF and it has enjoyed general community support; it was not "at the insistence of the RFC Editor". The RFC Editor 's role was to alert the community to a tendency towards
ballooning of author lists when every telecomm vendor wanted their name on the
RFC, and perhaps it is true that the magic number "5" (which could have been 4 or 6 or ....)
was chosen and documented by the RFC Editor.  Otherwise, it was a community
consensus.

At the time that the 5 limit was put in place, a new Contributors section was added to RFCs
to contain the overflow authors/contributors.

It is my personal opinion, based on this history, that for IPR purposes we ought to treat those listed in the Contributors sections as having equal copyrights to those named on the front page. (Maybe the Contributors section ought to come early in the RFC, rather than late. but that would be another discussion.) OTOH, the RFC Editor recoils from the idea that those in the Contributors section should logically be included in the AUTH48
process; let's not!.

Bob Braden


This appears to require complete abandonment of all previous works and
"clean room" rewrites under the new terms.

--
Dean

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