Hi Stephan,
Stephan Wenger wrote:
However, it is still a procedural end-run around the currently
> in-force IETF position that the IETF reserves the right for itself to
> create derivative works from the RFCs it created (my paraphrasing).
I am trying to follow the procedure. RFC 5377 says that authors should
be able to grant these rights. The first example I know of people doing
this was by putting a copyright statement in the XML source (RFC 2629).
But my understanding was that it was later preferred that an additional
grant be added in a section of the draft (see RFC 5215 Section 11). Then
with RFC 6716 the IETF decided it was better to add this grant to the
boilerplate text. Now there are objections to that approach, and we've
come full circle to a copyright statement in the XML source again. As
long as there is some way to do it, then I am happy.
Now, such a narrow exception does not solve the open source related
problems, but for that you should really start a debate about the
copyright policy as a whole, because it would be a major change
affecting key tradeoffs of that policy that were deliberated literally
for years.
I am actually personally fine if most authors do not want to grant these
rights. To my mind, they are the ones who wrote the documents, and if
they see these restrictions as beneficial, it's not my place to tell
them they are not allowed to have them.