Re: Editors vs Authors vs Contributors, was: ANNOUNCEMENT: The IETF Trustees invite your review and comments on a proposed Work-Around to the Pre-5378 Problem

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 2009-01-23 10:30, Theodore Tso wrote:
...
> Ultimately, I suspect the list of contributors is a good and polite
> thing to do out of courtesy, but it's not all that useful from an IPR
> point of view.  Even if there was code that you wanted to use from a
> pre-RFC5378 text, you wouldn't need or want to contact *all* the
> contributors; you would want to know who contributed the portion of
> the RFC containing the code that you wanted to use in an
> implementation (either proprietary or open source).

To be clear about the case of code: the right to use code was already
granted under the old rules; it's the right to use non-code text in
non-IETF derivative works that is made possible by the new rules.

RFC3978 and RFC3667 include:
      "(E) to extract, copy, publish, display, distribute, modify and
          incorporate into other works, for any purpose (and not limited
          to use within the IETF Standards Process) any executable code
          or code fragments that are included in any IETF Document..."

There's also a clause in the RFC2026 copyright boilerplate that can be
interpreted to allow code re-use (note the reference to implementation):
         "derivative works that comment on or
         otherwise explain it or assist in its implmentation may be
         prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in
         part, without restriction of any kind"

    Brian
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