--On Saturday, May 30, 2015 13:23 +0200 Benoit Claise
<bclaise(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> wrote:
Yes indeed, there are many different (corner) cases,
specifically related to the acknowledgment section.
An IESG statement must be concise, which makes it impossible
to take into account all potential situations.
You are right that, in the end, it's a judgment call.
Removing the acknowledgment parentheses can be done, but this
would dilute the "misleading in terms of support" message.
But the message is not "misleading in terms of support". Its
title and the entire text other than that parenthetical note are
about misrepresentation and false claims of authorship. If you
really want it to be about "misrepresentation in terms of
support", then I think there is a lot of rewriting to be done,
including, e.g., addressing the question of whether or not an
author should list an organizational affiliation (without
disclaimers) when her organization has given her permission to
develop the I-D but is either opposed to, or has taken no
position on, the protocol. If one is worried about
misrepresentations of support that is an equally important issue
because, e.g., a reader might plausibly assume that Cisco
supports anything you write that including a Cisco email and/or
physical address (and that assumption would be correct for some
companies).
One could argue that the opposite is also true -- that, when I
company is strongly pushing for a particular protocol or choices
about a protocol, employees of that company (or those sponsored
by it) are obligated to disclose that affiliation and the
company's position. We've never insisted on that, but perhaps
we should. In any event, it is another opportunity to open and
discuss some rather complex issues.
Suggestion, if you don't want to embark on a complete rewrite:
(1) Remove the parenthetical note
(2) Insert a comment early in the document, following Carsten's
lead, that says, more or less, "It is inappropriate to lie in
documents and, in particular, to make statements that are
inaccurate or deceptive about participation and/or support",
mentioning that issues can arise with authorship, affiliations,
acknowledgments, and Contributions, as well as and in other
areas and that there are circumstances in which omitting a name
or disclosure that is significant can be as deceptive as
including a misleading one.
(3) Then indicate that the authorship issue is a particularly
important case and make the rest of the statement about it, as
it is now.
john