From: Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
It's not merely that I-D's are already archived, albeit inconveniently
and obscurely.
yes, but IETF isn't (yet) maintaining public archives, so IETF doesn't
(yet) have the liability of breaking its agreement to expire the draft
after six months.
"expectation", yes. But "agreement"? Written where?
rfc 2026, for instance.
I agree that anyone who expects an I-D to completely disappear is naive.
But the real issues here are IETF's legal liability and loss of faith.
"loss of faith"?--perhaps.
"legal liability"?--to which bar are you admitted so that you can say
whether the current boilerplate imposes any such liability on the IETF?
the same one as you are. obviously IETF should solicit and give due
consideration to the advice of its legal counsel on this topic; I'm
merely pointing out (as have others) that there might be a liability here.
Essentially all I-D's that are submitted with the
expectation something very similar to their contents will become an RFC.
statistics by themselves would make that a fairly naive expectation.
but it is not really relevant.
I'm not a lawyer, but that observation sounds like an excellent defense
against legal claims of I-D authors unhappy about a new IETF I-D archive.
doesn't follow. if someone submits an I-D with the naive expectation that
it will be blessed as an RFC, this has no bearing whatsoever on a legal
claim by an I-D author that IETF broke its rules by putting his I-D
in a permanent archive.
there are folks who are quite
willing for IETF to publish their documents as RFCs if they are approved,
but would prefer that their documents not be archived if they are not
approved. it's sort of a "either give my document the respect it
deserves or you can't have it at all" mentality. and the author clearly
has the right to do that. (though since the days of required boilerplate,
perhaps only if he limits IETF's rights to publish as an Internet-Draft).
That expectation might be common, although it says bad things about the
IETF.
it says nothing at all about the IETF.
Do you honestly think that before the boilerplate that any such
legal liability existed and that courts would not be more likely than not
to laugh at an I-D author with such a complaint?
I've seen far worse things done by courts (not to mention the US Congress)
in the name of copyright.
Let's turn it around. Are you willing to accept the legal and criminal
liabilities for the legal advice you are giving? I'm not a lawyer, but
I've seen regular public comments by people claiming to be lawyers admitted
to at least one state bar saying that for non-lawyers to offer legal advice
is a crime in their state. Yes, the word they used was crime, and they
make clear they were not talking about of torts.
my advice is for IETF to very carefully consider the legal implications
(along with the other implications) of making old I-Ds available in a
public archive, given that (a) it has publically stated in its official
process documents and elsewhere that internet-drafts expire after six
months, and (b) for at least some of these I-Ds IETF may not have
permission to use them for other than their originally intended purpose.
if stating that is a crime...well, I'm guilty of far worse.
Keith