Re: Inactivity appeal

[Thomas Narten <[e-mail]>]

The Internet ADs have reviewed the set of events related to the
posting of draft-ymbk-opcode-discover-01.txt to the namedroppers
mailing list and the subsequent decision to block discussion of the ID
on the namedroppers list. This note requests that discussion of the
draft resume on the WG mailing list and notes that one significant
issue with the document has apparently been rectified in the
just-submitted -02 ID.

Background:

On June 3, 2001, Bill Manning posted a message to the namedroppers
mailing list that included the entire contents of
draft-opcode-discover-01.txt. That ID contains boilerplate text that
includes the words:

> This document is an Internet-Draft and is NOT offered in accordance
> with Section 10 of RFC2026, and the author does not provide the IETF
> with any rights other than to publish as an Internet-Draft. This
> document is a submission to the domain name system extentions
> (DNSEXT) working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force
> (IETF).

At that time, the Internet and other ADs noted and discussed the
boilerplate text, and then pointed out to the WG chairs that a
document with such boilerplate was not appropriate for discussion on
an IETF WG mailing list. There main reason for this is:

  - The above boilerplate indicates that the contribution is not
    subject to all the rules in Section 10 of RFC 2026. WGs should not
    spend significant cycles on documents with such risks, lest they
    invest cycles working on a technology for which IPR issues are
    discovered at a later time that should have been disclosed
    earlier. Furthermore, allowing significant WG discussion of such
    documents raises serious issues as to whether the IETF is
    following its own rules for openness. Such an issue could, for
    example, adversly impact the IETF's insurance coverage.

Consequently, the WG chairs were asked to limit discussion on the
document. In retrospect, the decision to prohibit all discussion of
the draft (e.g., including whether it was relevant to the WG) was too
strong. With this note, we request that that WG chairs allow
discussion of the draft on the WG mailing list, with the following
caveats.

The document cannot become a WG document until/unless it is submitted
with boilerplate statement 1. Statement 2 & 3 boilerplates do not
grant the IETF/WG any rights to produce a followup ID, excerpt text,
modify text, etc., as is necessary for IETF WGs to do their work. Note
that there have been cases in the past where a document author has
included a restricted copyright clause in a document, had the WG
invest cycles in the ID, and then subsequently refused to make
specific changes requested by the WG, forcing the WG to rewrite a
document from scratch in order to avoid copyright infringement
issues. This can waste significant time and WG resources and should be
avoided.  The Chairs and the WG should keep this in mind as discussion
takes place.

The WG & WG chairs should note that with a statement 3 boilerplate,
the author is specifically disclaiming the need to adhere to the IPR
portions of section 10 of 2026. This is at odds with the IETF's own
stated rules for a WG contribution and is unacceptable for a document
for which there is a reasonable expectation that its contents might be
incorporated into a WG document.  Discussion of such documents on IETF
mailing lists should be undertaken carefully and limited to a context
that takes into considerations the reasons why statement 3 boilerplate
was used and the limitations that implies. Note that the recent
submission of a -02 version of the document (posted 6/19/01) contains
a statement 2 boilerplate, apparently making the issue moot in this
particular case.

Thomas & Erik


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