In article <BA3A23E0-18F0-4515-A760-4EF6DB1CD743(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> you
write:
The author is the owner, and the IETF Trust is granted an unlimited copyright.
Uh, no.
What part of
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
is unclear?
Quite a lot, actually. But it's all explained in RFC 5378.
Contributors hold the copyright to their drafts, and grant a broad but
limited license (which is not the same as a copyright) to the IETF
Trust. The final RFC is a derivative work made by the IETF from the
draft, which is why the RFC has a joint copyright notice.
To return to the original question, the IETF has no obligation to
accept contributions from anyone. If we wanted to make a rule that
every I-D has to have the word "pickle" in the name, we could.
R's,
John