Re: legal consultation (was List moderator action)

["Scudder, John" <[e-mail]>]

On May 6, 2026, at 11:47 PM, Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> wrote:

Thr original intention was explicitly to allow the RFC series to
re-publish 3rd party specifications (whether proprietary, or controlled
by another SDO).

I had understood that a second reason for the clause was to allow authors to offer a spec for consideration as a WG document, without surrendering rights if the WG rejects it. In such cases, the spec would have to be republished by the author without the no-deriviatives clause as part of making it a WG doc. I speak under correction; I haven’t taken the time to run down the prehistory and so this may be apocryphal.

In any case, I’d still be OK with removing the option. I can’t think of a single time I’ve seen it used deliberately and productively. I can think of at least one incident where it was used accidentally because the author used a template that included it and nobody noticed until it reached IESG review, which should tell us something about how much anyone cares in their day-to-day work.

—John