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Re: What's an author? [was: Re: Policy and tools regarding the filing of Internet Drafts]

2015-04-23 19:59:05
Hi Loa,

On 23/04/2015 20:34, Loa Andersson wrote:
Brian,

On 2015-04-23 06:08, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
To some extent this thread has been ducking the question that lies behind it.
What is an author, in the IETF context? There's no short answer, so here's
a draft of a long answer. If people think it's useful, I can author an
I-D about it...

Scope

These guidelines are aimed at Internet-Drafts in the IETF publication stream.
They are intended to be compatible with the RFC Editor's style guide 
(RFC7322)
as well.

Authors

Authors are people who have made a substantial creative contribution to the 
document.
Normally this means writing text or drawing diagrams. Occasionally, with the 
consent
of the other authors, it means making some other substantial creative 
contribution to
the document, for example by writing a software implementation as part of 
the design
process.

If we have A, B, C, D, E and F that all claim that they have equal
contributions to a particular document, according to your definitions
it would be wrong to move any of them to the contributors section,
right?

If we have A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H, the same applies?

You are trying to murder me with 1000 recursive cuts :-).

Yes, of course there is that problem. When you get to the RFC Editor,
you can have that discussion, and I won it for RFC 7421 for example.

As my message said, it's a judgement call.

   Brian

/Loa

People who did not make any such substantial contribution must not be listed
as authors. People must not be listed as authors without their explicit 
permission.

The practical impact is that the authors will be listed as such on the front 
page if
the document becomes an RFC.

Contributors

Contributors are people who made smaller creative contributions to the 
document
than the authors.

People who did not make any such contribution must not be listed as 
contributors.
People must not be listed as contributors without their explicit permission.

The dividing line between contributors and authors is matter of judgement. 
However,
the RFC Editor's policy is to query any document that has more than five 
listed authors.

Editors

When a document has a large number of contributors and potential authors, it 
may
be appropriate to designate one or two people as "Editors" and list all the 
others
as contributors. The practical impact of this is that the editors will be 
listed
as such on the front page if the document becomes an RFC.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements should be given to people who have made significant creative
contributions smaller than those from the authors and contributors, or to 
people
who have made useful comments, provided critical reviews, or otherwise 
contributed
significantly to the development of the document. Acknowledgements may also 
be given
to people or organizations that have given material support and assistance, 
but
this should not include the authors' regular employers.

An acknowledgement does not signify that the person acknowledged agrees with 
the
document. In general, people who do not wish to be listed as an author or a
contributor, but have in fact made a significant contribution, should be 
given
an acknowledgement.

Copyright

None of the above affects copyright. Copyright in IETF documents is governed
by BCP 78, the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions, and applicable national and
international law.

Regards
   Brian

On 23/04/2015 14:55, John Levine wrote:
In article <20150423021027(_dot_)GL16567(_at_)mx2(_dot_)yitter(_dot_)info> 
you write:
On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 01:58:27AM -0000, John Levine wrote:
Someone pointed out that the authors all get notices when a new draft
is posted.  That seems good enough for the rare cases of false
attribution, so "never mind".

Except that the people included are thereby on the record as somehow
being an author of these things, and maybe they don't want to be.  I
think that's a little worrisome.

I was assuming that aggrieved non-authors could then use out of band
means to ask that their unauthored drafts be unpublished.  At least
this lets them know about funny business.

Sure, a sufficiently devious author could use fake addresses that he
controlled, but that seems a higher degree of evil than we need to
plan for.  Should it happen, I'm sure we'll have the tools to swat the
violators.

R's,
John





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