John, When we set up the IETF Trust, we did what we could to get all the rights. We discussed this actively in late 2006, and I found a list of test cases that includes RFC 791-793, but not RFC 768 for some reason. With a little research: ISI assigned all its rights to ISOC on May 2, 2007: https://iaoc.ietf.org/documents/Confirmatory_License_Pre_1998_Executed.pdf https://iaoc.ietf.org/documents/Confirmatory_Addendum_Post_1998_Executed.pdf ISOC assigned all its rights in RFCs to the Trust in 2006 (April or thereabouts). I hope this was updated to cover the rights obtained from ISI, but I don't know about that since I left the Trust in March 2007. If it was overlooked, the Trust will need to fix it. However, this certainly leaves open the question of the rights of the *authors* (or their estates) since there were no formalities in place, apart from whatever was hidden in employment contracts and USG-funded contracts. A few RFC authors signed a "Contributor Non-Exclusive Document License" to cover the pre-RFC5378 problem; I believe Steve Crocker signed one for RFC1, for example. But the Trust never followed up on this for the important early RFCs. Regards Brian Carpenter On 15-Jun-19 09:45, John R Levine wrote: > We recently got an inquiry about RFC 768. Jon Postel published it in 1980 > without a copyright notice, it's never been updated, and since it defines > UDP, it's implemented in billions of devices around the world. > > If someone wanted to reuse it, I can only guess where to ask. Since Jon > wrote it, perhaps it'd be his heirs, or perhaps it'd be USC since that's > who he worked for, or perhaps it'd be nobody since the government funded > him and US government works are P.D. > > Has anyone ever tried to work out who owns what for the early RFCs? I > think I understand what the rules are from RFC 1602 onward, but there's a > bunch of important ones earlier than that. > > Regards, > John Levine, johnl@xxxxxxxxx, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY > Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly > > PS: In case it's not clear, I'm not asking what anyone thinks the rules > should be or should have been, I'm asking to what extent we know what they > actually are. > >
