Re: IESG Statement on surprised authors

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

--On Friday, May 29, 2015 13:55 -0700 IESG Secretary
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> The IESG is planning to publish an IESG statement concerning
> the authorship of Internet drafts. This statement is only
> focused on the situation where an IETF participant feels
> he/she has been erroneously listed as an author on a draft.
> The statement can be seen here:
> 
> http://trac.tools.ietf.org/group/iesg/trac/wiki/SurprisedAutho
> rs

Hi.

I hope this does not turn into a long discussion, but I believe
the parenthetical note about "surprised acknowledgment" either
needs to be removed (since this statement isn't really about it
and does not provide a remedy, default or otherwise) or
clarified.   Acknowledgments raise several issues that have
caused controversy in the past.  In summary, our IPR policies
are usually interpreted as requiring acknowledgment when someone
has made a significant Contribution to a document [1].  Those
policies are about Contributions, not about whether someone
agrees with all, part, or none of the resulting document.
Certainly an acknowledgment should not claim endorsement or
support for a document that the person involved does not
support, but the presumed requirement to acknowledge
Contributions may not allow a Contributor to opt out entirely
from being acknowledged.

My sense is that we have not been consistent about resolution of
cases in which people have objected to having their
Contributions acknowledged in a document that they do not
support.  If this statement is going to address the "surprised"
acknowledgment issue [2], it is going to be necessary to
establish policy in that area, policy that may require opening
and either clarifying our fundamental IPR policies and the RFC
Editor's interpretation of them or trying to produce a detailed
policy on acknowledgments [3].

best,
    john



[1] There have also been controversies associated with people
not being acknowledged who think they should be.  Those
controversies and associated questions do not appear to interact
with this proposed statement.

[2]  I believe that "surprised acknowledgments" are
indistinguishable in practice from "unwanted" ones.  With both
acknowledgments and authorship, if actual editors notify the
offended party in advance about what they are going to do and
that party objects, the same issues exist whether there is
actual surprise or not.

[3] Personally, I would discourage the latter in favor of
continued reliance on author discretion, discussion within WGs,
etc., and application of courtesy and good sense.   Trying to
formulate a specific policy would probably take us on a tour of
ratholes and special cases and end up satisfying no one and
leaving other cases unresolved.