At 10:39 AM -0700 1/24/09, Doug Ewell wrote: >John Levine <johnl at iecc dot com> wrote: > >>Nonetheless, I can't help but seeing angels dancing on pins here. We're worrying about situations in which someone contributes material to the IETF that ended up in an RFC, then later goes to court and claims to be shocked and injured that someone else used his material in ways that RFCs are routinely used, i.e., someone acts like a complete jerk. > >It could happen. Remember that some people who participate in a WG, and contribute one or two bits of information that make their way into the RFC, are unhappy overall with that group's rough consensus. Not all "contributions" are positive or direct; an author might add wording specifically to ward off a rogue interpretation that someone in the WG "contributed." If you think this is improbable, read some of the appeals that the IESG has had to address in the past 3 years or so. You are missing John's point, which you elided below the quote above. If someone is a jerk and irrationally aggrieved, nothing we say in a boilerplate will prevent them from suing the IETF and incurring great costs in time and money. A very very careful boilerplate *might* cause them to be less likely to win damages, but balancing that against the time and effort we put into the boilerplate is literally impossible to do. --Paul Hoffman, Director --VPN Consortium _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf