On 9 June 2017 at 08:49, Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinde...@gmail.com> wrote: > You're making sense to me (which appears to be a habit of yours *hattip*). > > Dave's original question was if he should propose a policy change to the > Board. Although Dave certainly has a keen perspective of things, I think he > falls in the "engineer" category, more than in the "legal counsel" category. > Apologies to Dave if I sell him short here. Perhaps it'd be good to take one > step back, and propose that the Board finds legal advise on the subject. We > could look at larger standards development organizations, as Peter > suggested. Another option would be to reserve a certain amount of money and > seek legal counsel of our own. Also, some of our larger sponsors might have > inhouse legal departments. Perhaps they could help out. >
I am, indeed, not any kind of lawyer. However, I don't think this is particularly contentious. We have lots of documents for which one of the "Authors" hasn't made any input for several revisions. I see three cases for moving Authors to a "Previous Authors" section: a) This legal issue, which might expose authors and their employers. By clearly marking that an author is not current, it should address the concerns of (for example) Cisco's legal department. b) The case where an Author discovers their name still against a XEP and is concerned that the XEP misrepresents their views. I believe we have had such cases, and although obviously Authors can already request their removal in entirety, this also removes all acknowledgement for previous hard work. c) The case where Authors are simply unresponsive to concrete proposals and stall the standards process. While Council can again remove an Author entirely, this often seems like a nuclear option - as if Council is punishing, rather than simply moving things along. I see, on the other hand, no advantage to *not* having a Previous Authors section which properly acknowledges those who have put considerable effort into the document. I'm also happy to list these at the top of the document, maybe just like: Authors: Peter Saint-Andre, Dave Cridland (Previous) Dave. _______________________________________________ Standards mailing list Info: https://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/standards Unsubscribe: standards-unsubscr...@xmpp.org _______________________________________________
