ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [Trustees] ANNOUNCEMENT: The IETF Trustees inviteyour review and comments on a proposed Work-Around to thePre-5378 Problem

2009-01-21 12:23:35
On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:14:30AM -0600, Spencer Dawkins wrote:

(3) I would strongly discourage spinning up a General-Area working group  
without adopting the workaround - as an editor, even if I thought all  
contributors had granted 5378-as-it-exists-today rights, I'm not sure why 
I would make such a declaration. What if I was wrong?

I know what *I* would do, if I were editing a I-D document in this
post-5378 regime.  I'd put the darned thing under source control, and
in each changelog message I would include a reference to the message
ID and author names for each textual contribution that I didn't
personally author.  That would hopefully control the legal liability I
would suffer if someone tried to sue me claiming that I had somehow
included text which violated copyright in some way, since I would be
able to demonstrate provenance at least to who actual contributed the
text to the wg mailing list.  I still might end up having to sell my
house to defend the lawsuit, but at least I would hopefully not lose
my house as a result of making the promises required by RFC 5378 ---
at least I would hopefully be able to take down whoever had
misappropriated the text with me.  :-)

In short - please do something quickly, because the current situation is  
making things harder for people who want to get work done in the IETF, 
and that should trump every other consideration, IMO.

Indeed; I was only partially serious when I suggested that the IETF
trust should indemnify or otherwise provide insurance to I-D authors.
RFC-5378 is requiring them to take on potentially fearsome liability
risks, even if we're not dealing with legacy RFC's from the pre-5378
era.

                                                    - Ted
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>