Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 09:06:48 -0700
From: "Melinda Shore" <mshore(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com>
Message-ID: <004601c02bc1$9c4194c0$3c61530a(_at_)spandex>
| Maybe yes, maybe no. I don't think that anybody
| has proposed that expired drafts are to be considered
| valid inputs to the standards process. But just
| because they can't be used for work in progress
| does not mean that they should be disappeared, either.
No-one is silly enough to believe that old I-Ds can be made to simply
disappear. However, to the extent that the author has retained rights
in the I-Ds, no further copies may be made without the author's express
permission - that would be a breach of copyright.
Drafts I submit tend to be one of two forms - either they're WG product,
and are explicitly public domain, and I don't care in the slightest what
anyone does with them, forever (incidentally, those carry the "NOT in
comformance" boilerplate on the I-D, as to be in conformance I would have
to be granting some rights to the ISOC/IETF which is impossible, as being
public domain docs, I have no rights in them to grant to anyone - nor to
in any way restrict what anyone does with them).
Other drafts I send belong to me. I allow the IETF to distribute copies
until the draft is replaced, or expires (whichever comes first). If you
get a copy during that timeframe, you can keep it as long as you like.
But you can't make more copies. Now I'm not going to care if someone
comes and asks you personally for a copy, and you make the odd isolated
copy, but if you (the generic you, I am not referring to anyone who happens
to be listed in a header of this message particularly) start distributing
copies in large numbers, or making them available for others to start making
copies of trivially, then you are clearly breaching copyright, and you can
expect legal proceedings to commence soon.
As I think I said in a message early in this thread - and which Bob Braden
and others have also said, or implied - much of the problem seems to be that
not enough of the historical record is being captured in RFCs, so those who
want more of the historical record kept are searching for some other method.
A better solution would simply be to go back to publishing all that should
be published as RFCs, where everything will be available forever.
Mike O'Dell commented "once it has that designation "RFC", THE IDEA IS
SANCTIFIED" as a justification for restricting what gets published as
an RFC (I think). The current policy has been to go along with that
and more and more restrict what gets published as RFCs - basically
endorsing the sanctification. The alternative would be to explicitly
reduce that to an absurdity, by publishing more and more which is
clearly no more than a record of the state at a particular time.
kre