On 09/16/2013 02:20 PM, Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote: > I have doubts myself, doubts that I shared with the IESG that this > question is really needed. Asking this question at the end of the > process after the conformance with BCP 78 and BCP 79 was explicitly > declared with each version of the I-D submitted seems redundant. It is redundant. Deliberately so though, since as stated earlier we have seen cases where it did result in IPR declarations being made by long-time IETFers who'd forgotten old filings. In at least one such case we had to re-do an IETF LC, but it all did work out to the satisfaction of the wg in the end. From memory, I think we've seen about 3 IPR disclosures because of this question in the last year. So its not solving a huge problem, but it does catch a few things that'd be missed otherwise. > It > is probably intended to cover some corner cases where contributors > forgot particular disclosures, or disclosures happened after the last > I-D revision was submitted, or some of the authors on the authors > list were not involved directly in the latest submitted revisions of > the I-D. As WG chair however, as long as the question is formulated > under its current format in the shepherd write-up form, I feel that I > cannot responsibly answer to it without asking the authors. As shepherd, you do have the option of saying "I didn't ask Glen because I know it really annoys him and I know what his answer will be" or "I asked the authors, and all's well but Glen didn't respond but we know the question annoys him." > To quote Gonzalo: Responding with a "yes, per the draft's > boilerplate" should take only a few seconds Yeah, I agree. But its inevitable that a redundant bit of process stuff like this irritates someone, so we should all (incl. irritated parties:-) live with that and not make a deal of it. And lastly a question for Glen: Say a co-author of yours was prompted by this question to make a late IPR disclosure. While that's a low probability event, (about a 1% chance or so maybe), would that be better or worse than the disclosure not happening or happening after the draft had gone further in the process? If it'd be better then I don't get why you think its a problem that we double-check. (Or is there a better way to double-check that would not be as annoying?) If it'd be worse, (i.e. better to not know) then I don't get that. FWIW, much as I think most of the IPR we have to deal with is nonsense, I still think its better for us to double-check and get the IPR disclosures when we can easily do another IETF-LC. S.