Re: Last Call on draft-bradner-rfc3979bis-08.txt ("Intellectual Property Rights in IETF Technology")

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

--On Saturday, March 26, 2016 10:36 +0100 Harald Alvestrand
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> If the documents clearly define the term "design team" as
> teams that are created by a decision in an IETF process, I
> have very few problem extending "IETF contribution" to
> contributions to the design team.
> 
> If (as I've sometimes seen) everyone who meets to hash out an
> idea wants to call themselves + their friends is a "design
> team", then I see a problem with the extension.
> 
> The lunchtime "bar BOF" would be a nice test case - arranged
> by WG chairs over the WG (or IETF non-WG) mailing list, it
> would be an IETF activity with IETF contribution; arranged
> between friends on the way out of the preceding WG meeting, it
> would (I think) not be.

I think this is a good summary of a reasonable way to draw the
line.  For the second case, I do note that there have been
attempts by non-participants to define the second sort of group
as a design team in order to give them (or the WG Chairs)
leverage over membership and participation.  But I'd hope to
keep that separate... and a WG Chair could, subject to appeal,
designate such a group as a design team if it seemed to be
getting out of hand, so maybe there is no problem in practice.

     john