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Rights in early RFCs

"John R Levine" <johnl@taugh.com> Fri, 14 June 2019 21:45 UTC

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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2019 17:45:17 -0400
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From: John R Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
To: IETF general list <ietf@ietf.org>
Subject: Rights in early RFCs
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We recently got an inquiry about RFC 768.  Jon Postel published it in 1980 
without a copyright notice, it's never been updated, and since it defines 
UDP, it's implemented in billions of devices around the world.

If someone wanted to reuse it, I can only guess where to ask.  Since Jon 
wrote it, perhaps it'd be his heirs, or perhaps it'd be USC since that's 
who he worked for, or perhaps it'd be nobody since the government funded 
him and US government works are P.D.

Has anyone ever tried to work out who owns what for the early RFCs?  I 
think I understand what the rules are from RFC 1602 onward, but there's a 
bunch of important ones earlier than that.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

PS: In case it's not clear, I'm not asking what anyone thinks the rules 
should be or should have been, I'm asking to what extent we know what they 
actually are.

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