Re: Rights in early RFCs

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Saturday, June 15, 2019 16:32 -0400 Keith Moore
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 6/15/19 6:48 AM, Kathleen Moriarty wrote:
> 
>> I'll add to Paul's description.  Within the request, for one
>> document,  they wish to make a profile.  Normally, that's
>> fine.  Except that they  want to change keywords in
>> directions that they should not be changed  in a profile. 
>> For instance changing a MUST to a SHOULD or even a MUST 
>> NOT.  This obviously results in the profile not being in
>> compliance  with the referenced document and therefore not
>> interoperable.
> 
> Why would this community want to grant permission to do that,
> even if it were in our power to do so?

Keith (and others),

I've supplied a good deal of historical information to John
Levine off-list, but your question goes to what I think is the
key issue.  Unless we, for some reason I can't imagine, want to
encourage the creation of confusion about what our standards do
or do not say or require, we shouldn't grant this permission or
spend energy exploring ways to figure out what can or cannot
reasonably be granted and/or what is in the IETF Trust's power
to grant.   Instead, we should encourage whomever this is to
incorporate our standard (or selected parts of it) by reference
(something we could not prevent if we wanted to) and then to
identify what they want to make different.

	"Our protocol is just like the IETF's User Datagram
	Protocol [RFC768] except that where the FizzleFraz case
	is mentioned the implementer MUST NOT do Garglezork even
	if the IETF requires doing so." 

Is a perfectly good style of statement.  We couldn't prevent it
if we wanted to (although some effort to explain to them why it
would be a bad idea might be in order depending on what they are
actually trying to do and why).  And it creates absolutely no
confusion about what the IETF Protocol is.  

It seems to me that trying to give them permission to make
partial copies in support of developing a forked or conflicting
standard is not in the interest of either the IETF community or
the RFC Series and that, if the IETF Trust is exploring doing
so, they are in danger of losing their way about their
obligations to the community.

best,
   john