--On Friday, 21 January, 2005 15:42 +0100 Harald Tveit
Alvestrand <harald at alvestrand.no> wrote:
From Jorge:
3. Legal Advice.
(Apologies if I sound biased about this one, but....)
Although the IAD and IASA have responsibility for negotiating
and
approving all contracts relating to IETF, there is no
indication that they are expected or even encouraged to seek
legal advice
regarding these contracts. Given the unclear language of some
of the historical IETF-related contracts, I think it would be
advisable to set forth a principle that the IAD should seek
legal advice regarding any material contract that he/she
negotiates. This would exclude routine contracts for things
like office services, but should definitely apply to the
contracts with ISOC, IANA, ICANN, the RFC Editor, the
conference organizer (whether it's CNRI, Fortec, or somebody
else), and any contract that
relates to the development of data, software or other IP.
Good catch. And yes.
Moreover, I think that an express statement should be made that
the IAD/IASA should obtain "independent" legal advice. That
is,
from legal counsel who are not ISOC's counsel. This will serve
to reinforce the independence of IETF from ISOC.
While it isn't easy to think of cases where conflicts of
interest might arise, this seems to be to be useful at best and
harmless at worse. And, as you point out, it has useful
symbolic value, although I would have stated that last sentence
as "...of IASA from ISOC".
