[Techspec] RE: RFC Author Count and IPR

["Gray, Eric" <[e-mail]>]

Sam, et al,

	There are so many things tied up in this, that I am
afraid it is bound to turn into a rat-hole.

	For one thing, I thought Russ was talking about the
complication that arise from whether or not the BCP 78/79
stuff applies to people who made some contribution but are
not listed as "Authors".  I may have missed his point, but
this probably is an issue as there are other things in IPR
than "copyrights".

	For another, there is a clear distinction between
attribution and being listed as an author.  Most drafts I've
seen acknowledge the people making contributions.

	Also, RFCs are not (at least usually) a compilation of
related works by separate authors. An RFC typically requires
some unification and typically this is performed by one or 
more editors.  Because of churn-and-merge complexity, it is
usually the case that there is only one "editor" at any given
moment, and the list of "token holders" is both well defined
and small - consequently is is quite reasonable to ask that
a long list of authors be replaced by a shorter list of the
people who actually took turns as editors.

	I think the biggest issue is that the RFC Editor has
established guidelines that use a fixed number.  This can
lead to rather arbitrary decisions about who is an editor,
author or contributor.  Probably a better approach would be
to explicitly define what the RFC Editor means by the terms
contributor, author, editor and - perhaps - something even
more specific that that (e.g. - final editor?) and then
saying that some number of names MAY be listed on the first 
page and that the approach to determining what names should
be included is to pick the category that has no more than
that many in the list.

	I was pretty much under the impression that this is 
the informal approach used now. 

--
Eric

--> -----Original Message-----
--> From: Sam Hartman [mailto:[e-mail]] 
--> Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:06 PM
--> To: Russ Housley
--> Cc: [e-mail]; [e-mail]; 
--> [e-mail]; [e-mail]
--> Subject: Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
--> 
--> >>>>> "Russ" == Russ Housley <[e-mail]> writes:
--> 
-->     Russ> I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that
-->     Russ> limits the number of authors is in conflict with the IETF
-->     Russ> IPR policies.  The RFC Editor currently limits the author
-->     Russ> count to five people.  Recent IPR WG discussions make it
-->     Russ> clear to me that authors retain significant copyright.
--> 
--> [There is this concept in US copyright law called a joint work.  I'm
--> ignoring that concept for the moment basically because I don't
--> understand how it applies to either software or text developed using
--> an open process.  As far as I can tell, no one else understands it
--> either.  Please be aware that this may be a huge gap in my advice.]
--> 
--> So, here we have a conflicting definitions problem.
--> 
--> The author of a work retains the copyright interest.  That's true if
--> if I'm listed as an author or not.
--> 
--> If I write text and do not assign the copyright to someone, I retain
--> copyright interest in that text.
--> 
--> So the sixth person still owns the copyright interest in 
--> the text they
--> write even if they are not listed.
--> 
--> That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed
--> significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to
--> do anything interesting with that text.
--> 
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