Eric,
Thank you for the careful reading and constructive suggestions.
This document contains material from IETF Documents or IETF
Contributions published before November 10, 2008 and, to the
Contributor?s knowledge, the person(s) controlling the
copyright in
such material have not granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s)
controlling
the copyright, this document may not be modified outside the IETF
Standards Process, and derivative works of it may not be created
outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format it for
publication as an RFC and to translate it into languages
other than
English.
The first problem here is the phrase "and, to the Contributor's
knowledge, the person(s) controlling the copyright in such material
have not granted the IETF Trust the right...". As I read this, I am
directly affirming my belief that there are copyright holders who have
not granted these rights. This is all fine if I know exactly who the
original copyright holders are and that they have not given
permission, but the more likely case is that I don't know one way or
the other, and am simply unwilling to affirm the converse.
However, I am equally unwilling to affirm my knowledge and belief
that the persons controlling the copyright have not made grants.
I simply don't know. This text should be rewritten as:
This document contains material from IETF Documents or IETF
Contributions published before November 10, 2008. Some material
may be subject to copyright claims for which the holders have not
granted the IETF Trust the right to allow modifications of such
material outside the IETF Standards Process.
With a little bit of wordsmithing, I think that rephrasing this sentence
is fine.
In addition, the final sentence "Without obtaining..." seems overly
strong. It's phrased as if it were a condition imposed by the
contributor, i.e., I the contributor doesn't license you to use
this document unless you obtain "adequate" permission from
the original
copyright holders (with the contributor to be the judge of adequate,
perhaps). But that's not what's in play here. Rather,
it's that I the contributor can't give me license to material
I don't control. So, this sentence serves as advice, not
a license restriction
Actually, this is not correct. The sentence *is* intended as a license
restriction, not merely advice. Remember: all of this language is
being included pursuant to the authority granted to the Trust under
Section 5.3.c of RFC 5378, which allows a Contributor to limit the
Trust's right to grant derivative works (and thus avoid non-compliance
with the warranty contained in Section 5.6.c).
Thus, I'm happy to discuss re-wording the sentence to make it clearer,
but changing its meaning in this way would not allow the Trust to
address this issue within the parameters of RFC 5378.
and should be rewritten accordingly.
Perhaps:
Modification or creation of derivative works outside of the
scope of RFC 4978 may require obtaining a license from the
person(s) controlling the copyright on the relevant sections
of the document.
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