ANNOUNCEMENT: The IETF Trustees invite your comments on revised proposed legend text to work-around the Pre-5378 Problem

["Ed Juskevicius" <[e-mail]>]

This message is in follow-up to the IETF Trustees' request for community
review (announced on January 6, 2009) on some new legend text intended to
help authors work around the "pre-5378 problem".  

Please recall that some I-D authors have experienced difficulty implementing
RFC5378 since it was published on November 10, 2008.  An example of the
difficulty is summarized below:
  - an author wants to include pre-5378 content in a new submission
    or contribution to the IETF, but
  - the author is not able to assert that every author of the pre-5378
    content has agreed (or would agree) to license the earlier material
    for use outside of the IETF Standards Process

As a result of the above situation, many authors have reported they can not
submit or progress new contributions, because the legend text authorized by
the Trustees in November 2008 had no provisions for dealing with this
"pre-5378" problem. 

The Trustees met with legal counsel on January 22nd to discuss the comments
and suggestions which you have provided since January 6th.  We have received
many excellent suggestions for ways to clarify and improve the draft legend
text, and we are grateful for this.  

Based on the feedback received to date, the Trustees are now proposing a few
changes to the draft legend text. 

The 'old' legend text (as posted for community review on 2009-01-06) was:

> 6. Text To Be Included in IETF Documents
> c. Derivative Works and Publication Limitations
> iii.  If a Contribution includes Pre-5378 Material and the Contributor
> does not wish to allow modifications of such Pre-5378 Material to be
> made outside the IETF Standards Process:
>
> This document contains material from IETF Documents or IETF Contributions
> published before November 10, 2008 and, to the Contributor's knowledge,
> the person(s) controlling the copyright in such material have not granted
> the IETF Trust the right to allow modifications of such material outside
> the IETF Standards Process.  Without obtaining an adequate license from
> the person(s) controlling the copyright, this document may not be modified
> outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may not be
> created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format it for
> publication as an RFC and to translate it into languages other than
> English.

The updated proposed legend text based on the discussion to date is as
follows: 

This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF Contributions
published or made publicly available before November 10, 2008. The person(s)
controlling the copyright in some of this material may not have granted the
IETF Trust the right to allow modifications of such material outside the
IETF Standards Process. Without obtaining an adequate license from the
person(s) controlling the copyright in such materials, this document may not
be modified outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it
may not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format it
for publication as an RFC and to translate it into languages other than
English.

The Trustees invite your comments on the updated proposed legend text. We
believe the updated text incorporates the feedback we have received to date,
and we hope it clarifies the proposed legend.

The Trustees will meet again in early February to decide on whether to
revise the Trust License Policy based on the ongoing community discussion.
If so decided, a revision to the Trust's "Legal Provisions Relating to IETF
Documents" policy will be published.  Please refer to the attached PDF file
for an example of how the Legal Provisions document might look if today's
update to proposed legend text is adopted. A softcopy is available on the
IETF Trust website under the heading "DRAFT Policy and Procedures Being
Developed" at:
http://trustee.ietf.org/policyandprocedures.html 

If you have any comments on the updated proposed legend text, please post
them before the end of February 7th.  The Trustees need to decide on whether
to adopt the proposed legend text, and then communicate our decision to you
on or before February 15th.

Please give this your attention.

Regards,

Ed Juskevicius, on behalf of the IETF Trustees
[e-mail]

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