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Re: Rights in early RFCs

Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com> Fri, 14 June 2019 23:46 UTC

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Subject: Re: Rights in early RFCs
To: John R Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
References: <alpine.OSX.2.21.9999.1906141728410.11884@ary.qy>
From: Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com>
Cc: IETF general list <ietf@ietf.org>
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Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2019 11:46:40 +1200
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John,

When we set up the IETF Trust, we did what we could to get all the rights. We discussed this actively in late 2006, and I found a list of test cases that includes RFC 791-793, but not RFC 768 for some reason. 

With a little research:
ISI assigned all its rights to ISOC on May 2, 2007:
https://iaoc.ietf.org/documents/Confirmatory_License_Pre_1998_Executed.pdf
https://iaoc.ietf.org/documents/Confirmatory_Addendum_Post_1998_Executed.pdf

ISOC assigned all its rights in RFCs to the Trust in 2006 (April or thereabouts). I hope this was updated to cover the rights obtained from ISI, but I don't know about that since I left the Trust in March 2007. If it was overlooked, the Trust will need to fix it.

However, this certainly leaves open the question of the rights of the *authors* (or their estates) since there were no formalities in place, apart from whatever was hidden in employment contracts and USG-funded contracts. A few RFC authors signed a "Contributor Non-Exclusive Document License" to cover the pre-RFC5378 problem; I believe Steve Crocker signed one for RFC1, for example. But the Trust never followed up on this for the important early RFCs.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 15-Jun-19 09:45, John R Levine wrote:
> We recently got an inquiry about RFC 768.  Jon Postel published it in 1980 
> without a copyright notice, it's never been updated, and since it defines 
> UDP, it's implemented in billions of devices around the world.
> 
> If someone wanted to reuse it, I can only guess where to ask.  Since Jon 
> wrote it, perhaps it'd be his heirs, or perhaps it'd be USC since that's 
> who he worked for, or perhaps it'd be nobody since the government funded 
> him and US government works are P.D.
> 
> Has anyone ever tried to work out who owns what for the early RFCs?  I 
> think I understand what the rules are from RFC 1602 onward, but there's a 
> bunch of important ones earlier than that.
> 
> Regards,
> John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
> 
> PS: In case it's not clear, I'm not asking what anyone thinks the rules 
> should be or should have been, I'm asking to what extent we know what they 
> actually are.
> 
>

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