--On Friday, 12 December, 2008 14:20 -0500 Russ Housley
<housley(_at_)vigilsec(_dot_)com> wrote:
At 01:28 PM 12/12/2008, Simon Josefsson wrote:
As far as I understand, I can no longer take RFC 4398, fix
some minor problem, and re-submit it as a RFC 4398bis. Even
though I was editor of RFC 4398. The reason is that some
material in that document was written by others. At least, I
cannot do this, without getting permission from the other
people who wrote the initial document. I wish this is
mistaken and that someone can explain how to reconcile this
example with what Russ wrote.
Correct. RFC 5378 imposes this burden on the contributor.
All of the rights needed to make updates to the document
within the IETF Standards Process are clearly already
available, but the contributor is required to obtain the
additional rights that are required by RFC 5378.
Russ,
If you are correct then we should all put Tuesday on our
calendars as "the IETF grinds abruptly to a halt day".
This was almost certainly not what the IPR WG intended. I am
nearly certain that group never discussed the possibility that
the expansion of rights granted to the IETF Trust would
constrain the ability of the IETF to utilize work traditionally
available to the IETF by effectively blocking I-D publication of
something for which those broader rights could no t be
completely and easily obtained.
While I did not anticipate this one (or anything else nearly
this drastic), participants in the IPR WG will recall that some
small number of us raised questions about whether the WG
understood the implications of "incoming" well enough for
consensus on it to be meaningful and whether it was actually
workable in practice. That view obviously did not prevail in
the WG.
To take an example that is somewhat more immediate than Simon's,
I had planned to get rfc5321bis posted before the end of the
year. 5321 contains text from 2821 which, in turn was taken
from 821. If I have to obtain the rights called for by 5378
from the author of 821 in order to post a 5321bis/2821ter
draft... well, I'm pretty sure I don't know how to accomplish
that, so that project is immediately dropped and stays dropped
forever.
Certainly that was not what the IPR WG intended, regardless of
whatever can be said about its consensus about the documents.
Even more certainly, the IPR WG was not advised by Counsel (a
listed co-author of 5378) of this particular implication of its
work.
At least some of us believed, apparently naively, that Section
2.1 of what became 5378 implied that it would be possible to
post an I-D (and ultimately publish an RFC) that contained old
material by transferring rights in _new_ material to the IETF
Trust but leaving the material carried forward under the
original license of use for IETF purposes. If that is not the
intended interpretation, then are, IMO, in big, perhaps fatal,
trouble.
It is just my personal opinion, but I think the IESG and IAOC
had better figure out a way to untangle this mess, if necessary
by generating a pro-forma blocking appeal to yourselves on the
grounds of unintended consequences. As far as I can tell, you
have one working day :-(
john
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