At 10:39 AM -0700 1/24/09, Doug Ewell wrote: >John Levine <johnl at iecc dot com> wrote: > >>Nonetheless, I can't help but seeing angels dancing on pins here. We're >>worrying about situations in which someone contributes material to the IETF >>that ended up in an RFC, then later goes to court and claims to be shocked >>and injured that someone else used his material in ways that RFCs are >>routinely used, i.e., someone acts like a complete jerk. > >It could happen. Remember that some people who participate in a WG, and >contribute one or two bits of information that make their way into the RFC, >are unhappy overall with that group's rough consensus. Not all >"contributions" are positive or direct; an author might add wording >specifically to ward off a rogue interpretation that someone in the WG >"contributed." If you think this is improbable, read some of the appeals that >the IESG has had to address in the past 3 years or so.
You are missing John's point, which you elided below the quote above. If someone is a jerk and irrationally aggrieved, nothing we say in a boilerplate will prevent them from suing the IETF and incurring great costs in time and money. A very very careful boilerplate *might* cause them to be less likely to win damages, but balancing that against the time and effort we put into the boilerplate is literally impossible to do. --Paul Hoffman, Director --VPN Consortium _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
