Re: Rights in early RFCs

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 6/15/19 4:52 PM, John C Klensin wrote:

>
> --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.


I'm sort of thinking that the response should be:  The mission of IETF 
and affiliated organizations is to promote the Internet and 
interoperability of applications using the Internet.   If you want to 
promote specifications that break interoperability with our protocols, 
you're on your own.   Do your own research, hire your own lawyers to 
advise you, seek out whatever permissions from the original authors or 
their estates that you can get.  We're not going to help you, and we're 
not going to promise to not sue you if we find grounds to do so.

(more diplomatically than that, I suppose, but I find it easier to get 
the clear statement first then to recast it in diplomatic language if 
it's worth doing so)

And I get the idea of minimizing confusion between what IETF says and 
what some other organization says, but it might still be bad precedent 
to encourage that practice.

Say, for instance, some organization decided to promote a version of TLS 
that was exactly like IETF TLS except that it leaked keying material via 
a side channel.  We should do everything in our power to discourage 
that, and punish those promoting such practices, via any legal means 
available to us.

Keith