[Techspec] Re: RFC Author Count and IPR

Andy,

For what it's worth, I agree with you. Having a single editor simplifies many things, but having a authors list allows full credit to all parties.

John 

- original message -
Subject:	Re: RFC Author Count and IPR
From:	Andy Bierman <ietf@andybierman.com>
Date:		05/24/2006 7:19 pm

David Harrington wrote:
> If I remember correctly, we only limit the number of suthors on the
> first page of the document. 
> 
> It is perfectly acceptable to list a longer set of names inside the
> document in an contributors section.

It's not just the first page.
It also affects the reference citation used in
the RFC Index and all other RFCs.

I believe the 5 author rule was used as justification to remove
most of the original SNMPv2 authors from the author list and all
further reference citations, when the RFC 1901-1909 series was
advanced.  I don't really understand what purpose this serves.

> 
> I also have concerns about who should be listed as an "author" and
> have copyrights when a work is developed by a WG. The demand to do
> things with IETF documents beyond IETF standards work seems to be
> growing, so it will be an increasingly difficult problem if we do not
> identify all the people who contributed significant portions of a
> document (where significant is of course open to debate).

There is a problem with companies piling on the authors
for I-D proposals to make it look like lots of people
worked really hard on it and all agree on the contents.
(This is hardly ever the case.)

Then when you go to WG draft, there are already 5 or 7 names
as authors, and the WG wants to add more.  I think then, you
have to pick a real Editor (responsible for all edits all
the way through AUTH48) and just list that person as Editor
on the first page and citations, and put everybody in
the Authors section in the back.

IMO, this is different than removing the author(s) of a previous
version of an RFC.  I object to that practice.

> 
> dbh

Andy

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