Re: New document shepherd writeup

[John Scudder <[e-mail]>]

I think I can say without fear of contradiction that the IESG didn’t intend that the shepherd should have to solve the ack-implosion problem in order to satisfy this item, or achieve other heroic feats. It’s just a case of not having been careful enough with wording. Message received, good catch, sorry for the sloppiness, will fix.

To respond to Michael’s question “when is a person a contributor?”, Barry’s reply is chapter-and-verse correct of course. I think the language could probably be tightened to request confirmation from “each author or person named in the Contributors section, if any” (or something like that). I trust that would be sufficiently unambiguous and would return us to something comfortably close to the status quo ante.

(Possibly with some additional language about reminding the WG that contributors-writ-large in the sense of BCP 79 also have disclosure obligations; I see there are reasonable points both pro and con in this thread. Assuming we kept that, it would be without implying a duty to collect acks of course.)

Thanks,

—John

> On May 4, 2022, at 10:41 AM, Sean Turner <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> I was just about to ask a question related to Brian’s comment.
> 
> Previously when shepherd, I would send an email to the authors to confirm they had made the appropriate declarations. If I didn’t get a response, I stopped progressing the I-D. This resulted in some delays, but I got an answer.
> 
> Now, I am supposed to send an email to the WG and wait to get confirmations from all WG members subscribed to the list? ~1200 in the case of TLS!?!
> 
> Maybe I am just not thinking straight about this, but could the IESG provide an example of an email that I could send to the WG that will address the case where there are no IPR declarations and the other case where is some IPR declarations?
> 
> spt
> 
>> On May 4, 2022, at 10:13, Brian Rosen <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>> This is unworkable, please change.
>> 
>> You can get a “confirmed” from an author.  You can’t reasonably from any other larger group.
>> Acknowledgements nearly always include useful reviewers, who don’t get IPR disclosure requests (for their reviewing services anyway), so using that list isn’t useful.  We don’t track who contributes, so there is no way to get a list of contributors.
>> 
>> You can remind them, but you can’t expect to get confirmation.
>> 
>> I personally think a requirement to broadcast a reminder for every document has no value, but it’s not harmful.
>> 
>> But the proposed text, with any group other than authors is unworkable.
>> 
>> Brian
>> 
>> 
>>> On May 4, 2022, at 9:38 AM, Michael Tuexen <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On 4. May 2022, at 15:12, Lars Eggert <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Hi,
>>>> 
>>>> On 2022-5-4, at 15:46, Joel Halpern <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>>> As written, this seems to conflate two different concepts.
>>>>> 
>>>>> One of which seems to be a new requirement, although sometimes practiced.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The important existing requirement was that the authors (and by some interpretations the named contributors) confirmed explicitly that all known IPR believed to be relevant has been disclosed. That requires explicit responses from those people.
>>>>> 
>>>>> This text instead seems to ask if the WG has been reminded that they need ot disclose relevant known IPR. While a reasonable ask, it is not the same as the preceding and can not be answered the same way.
>>>> 
>>>> first, the term "interested community" was already used in several places in the previous shepherd writeup template; see https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/ietf-tools/datatracker/blob/5a31658b7f87054237430ee5fab8a23a8b32a7e8/ietf/templates/doc/shepherd_writeup.txt__;!!NEt6yMaO-gk!CTdmNsVkYNjldQ5bZpoCTuZCSMNmCbVCmEaPY2s6GtHR3qc3EKWGtMKobjZ79C6i5tXJvE3jRg$
>>>> 
>>>> You're correct that a change was made to this original question:
>>>> 
>>>>    (7) Has each author confirmed that any and all appropriate
>>>>    IPR disclosures required for full conformance with the provisions
>>>>    of BCP 78 and BCP 79 have already been filed. If not, explain why?
>>>> 
>>>> The text was broadened to "the interested community", because the shepherd need not only check that the authors have done so, but also that all contributors have done so. We probably should have phrased it as such and not reused the "interested community" term which was already used elsewhere.
>>> When is a person a contributor? Whoever is listed in the Ack section? Why are
>>> these persons required to answer such a question?
>>> 
>>> Best regards
>>> Michael
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Lars
>> 
>