Re: Status of this memo

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 4/27/21 6:22 PM, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:

> My understanding is that you are objecting to statements that "a WG
> draft is one where the WG has taken over change control".  I see your
> comments elsewhere that the author/editor should have freedom to make
> drastic changes, especially in earlier revisions, to attempt to improve the
> document.  I think I agree with you in the sense that requiring
> pre-approval to all changes to the text of a WG document hinders progress,
> but I also think that if there is a conflict between what the editor wants
> to do and what the WG wants to do, the editor must yield to the WG (or be
> replaced).  In this sense I would say that the WG has change control, since
> the WG consensus prevails.

I think I would say that, ideally, there is a tension between the role 
of the WG and the role of the document editor.   The WG often has very 
specific issues, concerns, and directions; the editor generally needs to 
think a bit more holistically.   The document editor needs to interpret 
the WG's instructions in such a way that the resulting document has 
coherence.   Sometimes that includes sorting out ambiguities and 
conflicts in the WG's direction, sometimes that can even mean 
synthesizing entirely new language that attempts to capture or address 
the spectrum of the WG participants' inputs.  If, early in the 
document's life cycle, the WG is directing the document editor to use 
exactly specific language, that's maybe a bad sign - the WG is trying to 
do the editor's job.

Now if an editor flatly refuses to try to make the document address the 
WG's concerns, or if perhaps, the WG loses faith in the editor's ability 
or willingness to do that - the WG can certainly fork that document and 
begin producing its own derivative works of that document.   In 
principle a WG can do this with any document that's within the scope of 
their charter and for which the WG has permission to create derivative 
works.   That permission is granted to the IETF Trust as part of the 
boilerplate (by reference, BCP 78, section 5.3 paragraph c).  The WG 
does not need to take any formal action to create a derivative work of a 
document when the IETF Trust already has permission to do this (I assume 
that the IETF Trust granted permission applies to the WG - though not 
sure precisely how that happens).

Note that creating a derivative work is not quite the same thing as 
delegating change "control", since the author of an original work still 
has the right to create derivative works of that work, and the license 
granted to the IETF Trust in BCP78 is explicitly non-exclusive.   Of 
course, in practice the WG decides which document it's going to forward 
to IESG.   But I don't know why the original authors should be forbidden 
to continue to revise their work in hopes of earning WG consensus... 
just as anyone else can submit their own draft to the WG and hope to win 
WG consensus for that draft over the WG's "adopted" version.   Mostly I 
think it's just important to minimize the potential for confusion 
between the two (or more) drafts.

If both the WG and the original author(s) can create derivative works, 
and the WG can decide which work to forward to IESG, the only real issue 
is who gets to keep the I-D identifier and produce revisions that retain 
that draft-ietf-wgname-xxx-yyy prefix.   I have a feeling that I know 
who would win that fight if it came to that, but my recommendation would 
be that neither the author nor the WG get to continue using the old 
prefix.   That seems like the least confusing result and also the one 
least likely to cause pointless conflicts.   Whether the datatracker can 
deal sanely with that case, I have no idea.

So, anyway, I don't think of "adopting" a I-D as asserting change 
control, and AFAIK there's nothing in the process of adopting an I-D 
that requires the original authors to relinquish their rights to create 
derivative works of their contribution.

Keith