RE: Authors and Editors (was Re: RFC Author Count and IPR)
This is exactly what we do in lemonade. We have 1-3 editors, with the possibility of the cast of thousands authors (contributors). I would challenge you to find five document that were WRITTEN by more than 3 editors. I offer five, because I am sure that out of ~5000 RFC's, it is statistically likely that a handful DO have more than 3 editors. However, I would offer that is the corner case, not the normal case. I would like to go further. We are the IETF. We are not Nature, Science, or even IEEE Transactions on Networking. Moreover, we are not writing patents. In the academic publication world, if I contribute the smallest idea, I can reasonably expect my name to be on the authors list, even if only near the end. Likewise, if I have one claim on a patent I can identify as mine, then my name goes on the patent as an inventor. However, the purpose of the IETF is not to publish academic documents. I assert that we work collaboratively to produce protocols, edited by a small handful of editors. Yes, we should acknowledge the editor's role. Yes, in the name of intellectual integrity, we must acknowledge contributors to the protocol. However, no, we do NOT need to put contributors on the title page. On the IPR thing: if the Note Well doesn't cover us, we are screwed anyway. All IMHO. -Original Message- From: Spencer Dawkins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 3:43 PM To: ietf@ietf.org Subject: Authors and Editors (was Re: RFC Author Count and IPR) Dropping techspec and ipr-wg from this part of the thread The current limit of 5 seems to be motivated by formatting constraints and maybe by the notion that vanity publishing should be prevented. It is not clear to me that these motivations have legal standing and essentially, for practical purposes, force authors to give up their rights. In the past, I know that for some drafts, this limit has been extended when the AD made the right noises to the RFC editor, so it is not universally observed. People can tell me that I've been misleading WG chairs and editors, but what I've been saying in the WG Leadership tutorial is that the 5-author limit resulted from - the practice of contacting authors at AUTH48, only to find out that more authors increase the likelihood of job changes and/or e-mail bounces, plus - several dog-pile author lists on drafts with a huge number of authors, leading us to suspect that this was an effort to demonstrate support from a large group of vendors (so this should be a WG draft and WGLCed immediately), plus - text formatting software that broke when the author list wouldn't fit on one page because there were so many authors. I hear Russ's concern about tracking IPR sources, but hope this doesn't get conflated with author/editor tracking. I'm the draft editor for the Softwires problem statement, which would have seven authors (including me), except that we're trying to observe the five-author guideline. Since this causes some heartburn, what I've been thinking about proposing was - if you have individual authors, you do both the front page and the author section as we do them today - if you have an editor, you list the editor on the front page, but not the authors, and you list both editors and authors listed in the author section (as we do today) But I'm still thinking... Thanks, Spencer ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Unfortunately the genesis of some IP is not that easily dealt with - In fact EACH and EVERY contributor must be named, since their rights to the core genesis are something that are either defined in an agreement or somethign for resolution before a trier of fact in some form. Todd - Original Message - From: Vijay Devarapallli [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Bob Braden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: ietf@ietf.org; techspec@ietf.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; ipr-wg@ietf.org; rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 11:50 AM Subject: Re: RFC Author Count and IPR On 5/24/06, Bob Braden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed * significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to * do anything interesting with that text. * Who decides what constitutes a significant chunk? the primary author (there is always one person who maintains the XML source) and the WG chairs? Vijay ___ Ipr-wg mailing list Ipr-wg@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Russ Housley wrote: Sam: If the people with copyright interest are the combination of the authors plus the contributors, then we need to specify this in a BCP. Does the RFC Editor have to contact the members of both lists during Auth48? If so, I would suggest that the RFf Editor only needs a positive reply from the authors, but that the contributors only need to respond if they discover a change that is needed. In looking over the various sub-threads on this topic, it is feeling an awful lot like the discussion is trying to attend to legal issues, without benefit of legal counsel. (I know that a number of the participants in the thread have been dealing with this topic, for a long time, including contact with legal counsel. My point is that the current discussion either ought to include direct contribution by an intellectual property attorney or we should largely drop the issue.) Wouldn't it make more sense for the rules concerning author list to be dictated by the combination of the needs to state primary resonsibility, ie, those writing the docs, and logistics/processing needs of those publishing it? d/ ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
On Monday, June 05, 2006 09:16:18 AM -0700 Dave Crocker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Wouldn't it make more sense for the rules concerning author list to be dictated by the combination of the needs to state primary resonsibility, ie, those writing the docs, and logistics/processing needs of those publishing it? I certainly think it would. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
On 5/24/06, Bob Braden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In case anyone is unsure, the actual policy being followed by the RFC Editor will be found at: http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html#policy.authlist Bob, How does this policy relate to the one found at: http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html#policy.auth2 The Author Overload policy says that 'contact addresses may also be included in the Contributors section for those contributors whose knowledge makes them useful future contacts for information about the RFC'; the Authors vs. Contributors policy says 'can/should the Contributors section include contact information? With the clarification above, it should be clear that the answer will be: No, contact information should be in the Contact Information section.' Of course, that will be is predicated on the proposed renaming of Authors' Addresses to Contact Information; perhaps since that hasn't happened it can be assumed that the statement in the Author Overload policy is the one currently in force, but I find it a little confusing to have these apparently-contradictory statements on the same page. Thanks, Bill ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Tracking IPR (Re: RFC Author Count and IPR)
Just one note on this long thread: At present, the IETF secretariat does *not* attempt to track who has copyright rights on what parts of the text. Neither, as far as I know, does anyone else (WG chair or editors), apart from following the RFC 2026 rule that significant contributions should be acknowledged - this is commonly done by Authors, Contributors and Acknowledgement sections, which rarely point to specific pieces of text. Claiming that we track copyrights on pieces of text, and then not doing it, would, in my opinion, be extremely stupid for multiple reasons. So I want to make it perfectly clear that the IETF is NOT doing this. Harald ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Dear Russ, the authors can either be individuals or WGs. The practice to quote authors for WG documents while they are a cooperative work seems a wrong practice to me. Copyrights' period take into consideration the date of the death of the last contributor. The name of all the members of a WG should be noted if the rights are not exclusively with the IETF. When a group of individuals wants to propose a document its members known the numerus clausus before (whatever the number). The missing possibility is for an entity to introduce a collective Draft. Only IAN, IESG, etc.can introduce a Draft under their name. IMHO WG2 and RD organisations should too. jfc At 18:37 24/05/2006, Russ Housley wrote: I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that limits the number of authors is in conflict with the IETF IPR policies. The RFC Editor currently limits the author count to five people. Recent IPR WG discussions make it clear to me that authors retain significant copyright. In one of the working groups in the Security Area, there is a document with six authors on it. I asked the WG chairs to reduce the author count in the hope of avoiding a problem down the road. At that time, I was not aware of the copyright. Now, I think I gave the WG Chairs inappropriate directions. The IESG and the whole Internet Community needs clear direction on this issue. I suspect that the IPR WG will be a part of the process to resolve it. Also, the Tech Spec document, which is currently in Last Call, many need to include a requirement that the RFC Editor explicitly acknowledge copyright holders in some fashion. Russ ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Russ Housley wrote: I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that limits the number of authors is in conflict with the IETF IPR policies. The RFC Editor currently limits the author count to five people. FYI, that is a violation of Article 6bis of Berne convention: (1) Independently of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work, which would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation. That is, in most countries including US, no one can distort the real authorship (perhaps without spontaneous consent from the authors). Masataka Ohta ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Russ == Russ Housley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Russ I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that Russ limits the number of authors is in conflict with the IETF Russ IPR policies. The RFC Editor currently limits the author Russ count to five people. Recent IPR WG discussions make it Russ clear to me that authors retain significant copyright. [There is this concept in US copyright law called a joint work. I'm ignoring that concept for the moment basically because I don't understand how it applies to either software or text developed using an open process. As far as I can tell, no one else understands it either. Please be aware that this may be a huge gap in my advice.] So, here we have a conflicting definitions problem. The author of a work retains the copyright interest. That's true if if I'm listed as an author or not. If I write text and do not assign the copyright to someone, I retain copyright interest in that text. So the sixth person still owns the copyright interest in the text they write even if they are not listed. That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to do anything interesting with that text. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Sam: We need a way to track the people that have copyright interest. I had always assumed this was the author list. If we are going to continue to limit the author count to five people, then there needs to be a place where the people with copyright interest are listed in the document. This is the reason that I included the techspec mail list on my posting. Russ At 02:06 PM 5/24/2006, Sam Hartman wrote: Russ == Russ Housley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Russ I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that Russ limits the number of authors is in conflict with the IETF Russ IPR policies. The RFC Editor currently limits the author Russ count to five people. Recent IPR WG discussions make it Russ clear to me that authors retain significant copyright. [There is this concept in US copyright law called a joint work. I'm ignoring that concept for the moment basically because I don't understand how it applies to either software or text developed using an open process. As far as I can tell, no one else understands it either. Please be aware that this may be a huge gap in my advice.] So, here we have a conflicting definitions problem. The author of a work retains the copyright interest. That's true if if I'm listed as an author or not. If I write text and do not assign the copyright to someone, I retain copyright interest in that text. So the sixth person still owns the copyright interest in the text they write even if they are not listed. That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to do anything interesting with that text. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: RFC Author Count and IPR
If I remember correctly, we only limit the number of suthors on the first page of the document. It is perfectly acceptable to list a longer set of names inside the document in an contributors section. I also have concerns about who should be listed as an author and have copyrights when a work is developed by a WG. The demand to do things with IETF documents beyond IETF standards work seems to be growing, so it will be an increasingly difficult problem if we do not identify all the people who contributed significant portions of a document (where significant is of course open to debate). dbh -Original Message- From: Sam Hartman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:06 PM To: Russ Housley Cc: rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org; ietf@ietf.org; techspec@ietf.org; ipr-wg@ietf.org Subject: Re: RFC Author Count and IPR Russ == Russ Housley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Russ I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that Russ limits the number of authors is in conflict with the IETF Russ IPR policies. The RFC Editor currently limits the author Russ count to five people. Recent IPR WG discussions make it Russ clear to me that authors retain significant copyright. [There is this concept in US copyright law called a joint work. I'm ignoring that concept for the moment basically because I don't understand how it applies to either software or text developed using an open process. As far as I can tell, no one else understands it either. Please be aware that this may be a huge gap in my advice.] So, here we have a conflicting definitions problem. The author of a work retains the copyright interest. That's true if if I'm listed as an author or not. If I write text and do not assign the copyright to someone, I retain copyright interest in that text. So the sixth person still owns the copyright interest in the text they write even if they are not listed. That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to do anything interesting with that text. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Russ == Russ Housley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Russ Sam: We need a way to track the people that have copyright Russ interest. I had always assumed this was the author list. Russ If we are going to continue to limit the author count to Russ five people, then there needs to be a place where the people Russ with copyright interest are listed in the document. This is Russ the reason that I included the techspec mail list on my Russ posting. I think that's probably authors?+contributors. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
* That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed * significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to * do anything interesting with that text. * Who decides what constitutes a significant chunk? Bob Braden ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Sam: If the people with copyright interest are the combination of the authors plus the contributors, then we need to specify this in a BCP. Does the RFC Editor have to contact the members of both lists during Auth48? If so, I would suggest that the RFf Editor only needs a positive reply from the authors, but that the contributors only need to respond if they discover a change that is needed. Russ At 02:35 PM 5/24/2006, Sam Hartman wrote: Russ == Russ Housley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Russ Sam: We need a way to track the people that have copyright Russ interest. I had always assumed this was the author list. Russ If we are going to continue to limit the author count to Russ five people, then there needs to be a place where the people Russ with copyright interest are listed in the document. This is Russ the reason that I included the techspec mail list on my Russ posting. I think that's probably authors?+contributors. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Authorship discussions have a long history in the sciences. I'm not aware of any other scientific or technical publication that limits the number of authors. (Indeed, I have had to extend the maximum author count on a largish conference management system I run [edas.info] a few times.) The current limit of 5 seems to be motivated by formatting constraints and maybe by the notion that vanity publishing should be prevented. It is not clear to me that these motivations have legal standing and essentially, for practical purposes, force authors to give up their rights. In the past, I know that for some drafts, this limit has been extended when the AD made the right noises to the RFC editor, so it is not universally observed. My understanding is that contributors generally have inferior rights, not much different from those individuals acknowledged in the acknowledgment section of technical papers and RFCs. After some of the recent science scandals, there also seems to be a movement afoot (e.g., for Science and Nature) to force all authors to take responsibility for the paper and its content. That's a flip-side, also from an IPR perspective: If somebody can plausibly claim that they just got added to the author list without their consent, they could weasle out of the IPR disclosure rules. At least from my experience, it is not uncommon that I-D authors add others as a courtesy and, currently, nobody seems to check whether these authors consented to being an author... Henning Vijay Devarapallli wrote: On 5/24/06, Sam Hartman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to do anything interesting with that text. typically the unlisted authors are ignored. also during the AUTH48 period, the RFC Editor contacts only the listed authors. Vijay ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: RFC Author Count and IPR
Sam, et al, There are so many things tied up in this, that I am afraid it is bound to turn into a rat-hole. For one thing, I thought Russ was talking about the complication that arise from whether or not the BCP 78/79 stuff applies to people who made some contribution but are not listed as Authors. I may have missed his point, but this probably is an issue as there are other things in IPR than copyrights. For another, there is a clear distinction between attribution and being listed as an author. Most drafts I've seen acknowledge the people making contributions. Also, RFCs are not (at least usually) a compilation of related works by separate authors. An RFC typically requires some unification and typically this is performed by one or more editors. Because of churn-and-merge complexity, it is usually the case that there is only one editor at any given moment, and the list of token holders is both well defined and small - consequently is is quite reasonable to ask that a long list of authors be replaced by a shorter list of the people who actually took turns as editors. I think the biggest issue is that the RFC Editor has established guidelines that use a fixed number. This can lead to rather arbitrary decisions about who is an editor, author or contributor. Probably a better approach would be to explicitly define what the RFC Editor means by the terms contributor, author, editor and - perhaps - something even more specific that that (e.g. - final editor?) and then saying that some number of names MAY be listed on the first page and that the approach to determining what names should be included is to pick the category that has no more than that many in the list. I was pretty much under the impression that this is the informal approach used now. -- Eric -- -Original Message- -- From: Sam Hartman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:06 PM -- To: Russ Housley -- Cc: rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org; ietf@ietf.org; -- techspec@ietf.org; ipr-wg@ietf.org -- Subject: Re: RFC Author Count and IPR -- -- Russ == Russ Housley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: -- -- Russ I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that -- Russ limits the number of authors is in conflict with the IETF -- Russ IPR policies. The RFC Editor currently limits the author -- Russ count to five people. Recent IPR WG discussions make it -- Russ clear to me that authors retain significant copyright. -- -- [There is this concept in US copyright law called a joint work. I'm -- ignoring that concept for the moment basically because I don't -- understand how it applies to either software or text developed using -- an open process. As far as I can tell, no one else understands it -- either. Please be aware that this may be a huge gap in my advice.] -- -- So, here we have a conflicting definitions problem. -- -- The author of a work retains the copyright interest. That's true if -- if I'm listed as an author or not. -- -- If I write text and do not assign the copyright to someone, I retain -- copyright interest in that text. -- -- So the sixth person still owns the copyright interest in -- the text they -- write even if they are not listed. -- -- That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed -- significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to -- do anything interesting with that text. -- -- ___ -- Ietf mailing list -- Ietf@ietf.org -- https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf -- ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
On 5/24/06, Bob Braden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed * significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to * do anything interesting with that text. * Who decides what constitutes a significant chunk? the primary author (there is always one person who maintains the XML source) and the WG chairs? Vijay ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
On May 24, 2006, at 14:42, Russ Housley wrote: If the people with copyright interest are the combination of the authors plus the contributors, then we need to specify this in a BCP. We might also want to suggest that the acknowledgment specifically indicate if someone contributed text, as a text-contributor may have rights that an idea-contributor does not. With the default assumption being that contributed, if not clarified, means contributed text and/or ideas. There's also the related issue of text taken from a previous RFC -- I would think it would suffice to acknowledge the source of the text, rather than merging contributor/author lists. (Though if the previous author list is small and the copied text is large, specific, explicit acknowledgment in the new document is probably the polite thing to do.) But either way, those authors may also retain copyright interest in the new document. Does the RFC Editor have to contact the members of both lists during Auth48? If so, I would suggest that the RFf Editor only needs a positive reply from the authors, but that the contributors only need to respond if they discover a change that is needed. I would think the RFC Editor probably does not need to; after all, isn't the short list also (a superset of) the people already acting as editors on behalf of the working group, other contributors, etc? Those people may choose to include various contributors in the Auth48 review, or not. Ken ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: RFC Author Count and IPR
Henning, IRT BCP 78/79 IPR statements, it's actually worse than you indicate. The issue is that (because of the Note Well) you can't effectively take back a contribution and (because of the need for proper attribution) you really cannot de-list someone who has made any significant contribution to the document. Because of the wording in current IPR BCPs, however, any author is not only agreeing to be responsible for IPR that he (or she) may have in their contribution, but also any IPR they may know of that relates to other contributions made in an RFC for which they are a listed author. One seriously detrimental effect of these considerations is that this actively discourages an RFC author (and possibly any other contributor) from trying to determine if his (or her) employer actually has any IPR in the technology about which they are writing - and, thus, encouraging a separation between those who do things and those who write about it... -- Eric -- -Original Message- -- From: Henning Schulzrinne [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:43 PM -- To: Vijay Devarapallli -- Cc: rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org; Sam Hartman; -- ipr-wg@ietf.org; techspec@ietf.org; ietf@ietf.org -- Subject: Re: RFC Author Count and IPR -- -- Authorship discussions have a long history in the sciences. I'm not -- aware of any other scientific or technical publication that -- limits the -- number of authors. (Indeed, I have had to extend the maximum author -- count on a largish conference management system I run -- [edas.info] a few -- times.) The current limit of 5 seems to be motivated by formatting -- constraints and maybe by the notion that vanity -- publishing should be -- prevented. It is not clear to me that these motivations have legal -- standing and essentially, for practical purposes, force -- authors to give -- up their rights. In the past, I know that for some drafts, -- this limit -- has been extended when the AD made the right noises to the -- RFC editor, -- so it is not universally observed. -- -- My understanding is that contributors generally have -- inferior rights, -- not much different from those individuals acknowledged in the -- acknowledgment section of technical papers and RFCs. -- -- After some of the recent science scandals, there also seems to be a -- movement afoot (e.g., for Science and Nature) to force all -- authors to -- take responsibility for the paper and its content. That's a -- flip-side, -- also from an IPR perspective: If somebody can plausibly -- claim that they -- just got added to the author list without their consent, they could -- weasle out of the IPR disclosure rules. At least from my -- experience, it -- is not uncommon that I-D authors add others as a courtesy and, -- currently, nobody seems to check whether these authors consented to -- being an author... -- -- Henning -- -- Vijay Devarapallli wrote: -- On 5/24/06, Sam Hartman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- -- That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed -- significant chunks of text, you still need to get their -- clearance to -- do anything interesting with that text. -- -- typically the unlisted authors are ignored. -- -- also during the AUTH48 period, the RFC Editor contacts -- only the listed -- authors. -- -- Vijay -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ___ -- Ietf mailing list -- Ietf@ietf.org -- https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf -- -- ___ -- Ietf mailing list -- Ietf@ietf.org -- https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf -- ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Authors and Editors (was Re: RFC Author Count and IPR)
Dropping techspec and ipr-wg from this part of the thread The current limit of 5 seems to be motivated by formatting constraints and maybe by the notion that vanity publishing should be prevented. It is not clear to me that these motivations have legal standing and essentially, for practical purposes, force authors to give up their rights. In the past, I know that for some drafts, this limit has been extended when the AD made the right noises to the RFC editor, so it is not universally observed. People can tell me that I've been misleading WG chairs and editors, but what I've been saying in the WG Leadership tutorial is that the 5-author limit resulted from - the practice of contacting authors at AUTH48, only to find out that more authors increase the likelihood of job changes and/or e-mail bounces, plus - several dog-pile author lists on drafts with a huge number of authors, leading us to suspect that this was an effort to demonstrate support from a large group of vendors (so this should be a WG draft and WGLCed immediately), plus - text formatting software that broke when the author list wouldn't fit on one page because there were so many authors. I hear Russ's concern about tracking IPR sources, but hope this doesn't get conflated with author/editor tracking. I'm the draft editor for the Softwires problem statement, which would have seven authors (including me), except that we're trying to observe the five-author guideline. Since this causes some heartburn, what I've been thinking about proposing was - if you have individual authors, you do both the front page and the author section as we do them today - if you have an editor, you list the editor on the front page, but not the authors, and you list both editors and authors listed in the author section (as we do today) But I'm still thinking... Thanks, Spencer ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Vijay == Vijay Devarapallli [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Vijay On 5/24/06, Bob Braden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed * significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to * do anything interesting with that text. * Who decides what constitutes a significant chunk? Vijay the primary author (there is always one person who No, a court in case of copyright suit. Lazy evaluation is not lways your friend. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Russ == Russ Housley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Russ Sam: If the people with copyright interest are the Russ combination of the authors plus the contributors, then we Russ need to specify this in a BCP. The people with copyright interest are whoever the court decides have copyright interest. I.E. only available on lazy evaluation. I agree we may want to specify in our publishing practices that we keep track of who we think has copyright interest. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
In case anyone is unsure, the actual policy being followed by the RFC Editor will be found at: http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html#policy.authlist Bob Braden for the RFC Editor ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
David Harrington wrote: If I remember correctly, we only limit the number of suthors on the first page of the document. It is perfectly acceptable to list a longer set of names inside the document in an contributors section. It's not just the first page. It also affects the reference citation used in the RFC Index and all other RFCs. I believe the 5 author rule was used as justification to remove most of the original SNMPv2 authors from the author list and all further reference citations, when the RFC 1901-1909 series was advanced. I don't really understand what purpose this serves. I also have concerns about who should be listed as an author and have copyrights when a work is developed by a WG. The demand to do things with IETF documents beyond IETF standards work seems to be growing, so it will be an increasingly difficult problem if we do not identify all the people who contributed significant portions of a document (where significant is of course open to debate). There is a problem with companies piling on the authors for I-D proposals to make it look like lots of people worked really hard on it and all agree on the contents. (This is hardly ever the case.) Then when you go to WG draft, there are already 5 or 7 names as authors, and the WG wants to add more. I think then, you have to pick a real Editor (responsible for all edits all the way through AUTH48) and just list that person as Editor on the first page and citations, and put everybody in the Authors section in the back. IMO, this is different than removing the author(s) of a previous version of an RFC. I object to that practice. dbh Andy ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
Andy, For what it's worth, I agree with you. Having a single editor simplifies many things, but having a authors list allows full credit to all parties. John - original message - Subject:Re: RFC Author Count and IPR From: Andy Bierman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 05/24/2006 7:19 pm David Harrington wrote: If I remember correctly, we only limit the number of suthors on the first page of the document. It is perfectly acceptable to list a longer set of names inside the document in an contributors section. It's not just the first page. It also affects the reference citation used in the RFC Index and all other RFCs. I believe the 5 author rule was used as justification to remove most of the original SNMPv2 authors from the author list and all further reference citations, when the RFC 1901-1909 series was advanced. I don't really understand what purpose this serves. I also have concerns about who should be listed as an author and have copyrights when a work is developed by a WG. The demand to do things with IETF documents beyond IETF standards work seems to be growing, so it will be an increasingly difficult problem if we do not identify all the people who contributed significant portions of a document (where significant is of course open to debate). There is a problem with companies piling on the authors for I-D proposals to make it look like lots of people worked really hard on it and all agree on the contents. (This is hardly ever the case.) Then when you go to WG draft, there are already 5 or 7 names as authors, and the WG wants to add more. I think then, you have to pick a real Editor (responsible for all edits all the way through AUTH48) and just list that person as Editor on the first page and citations, and put everybody in the Authors section in the back. IMO, this is different than removing the author(s) of a previous version of an RFC. I object to that practice. dbh Andy ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Authors and Editors (was Re: RFC Author Count and IPR)
* From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed May 24 12:46:43 2006 * X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.5 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham Spencer Dawkins wrote: * People can tell me that I've been misleading WG chairs and editors, but what * I've been saying in the WG Leadership tutorial is that the 5-author limit * resulted from * * - the practice of contacting authors at AUTH48, only to find out that more * authors increase the likelihood of job changes and/or e-mail bounces, plus * No. The practice of contacting all authors was a RESULT of the author limitation and the desire to prevent vanity publishing. * - several dog-pile author lists on drafts with a huge number of authors, * leading us to suspect that this was an effort to demonstrate support from * a large group of vendors (so this should be a WG draft and WGLCed * immediately), plus * YES! This was the major motivation. Augmented by the concept that the IETF is about individuals, not about corporations. * - text formatting software that broke when the author list wouldn't fit on * one page because there were so many authors. * No. What is true is that the historical format of the first page gets kinda ugly with a large list of authors. This was certainly not the gating concern, however. Bob Braden * But I'm still thinking... * * Thanks, * * Spencer * * * * ___ * Ietf mailing list * Ietf@ietf.org * https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf * ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
