Re: #1400 Opinion poll - question draft

[Simon Josefsson <simon at josefsson.org>]

"Joel M. Halpern" <joel at stevecrocker.com> writes:

> My best guess to the "IETF tradition" in this space is that we have
> been very unclear.

I've not seen anyone claim that the rights which are granted to IETF
documents were not up to each author to decide.  The author's decision
can naturally be influenced by others in a working group, and by the
rules needed by the IETF to be able to publish the documents at all.

> In all cases, as was noted with earlier text, any such choice would
> have to be up to the working group, not the author.

Hm, can you give a reference or expand on that?

I believe that the one who wrote the text decides the rules for the
text.

It may be that a working group decides, that if an author demands
certain special license texts, the author has to be replaced by
someone else who is willing to use a different license, but that is as
far as, I believe, working group powers reach.

> But I think that leaving it up to the working group is a bad idea, for
> several reasons:
> First and foremost, it means that readers do not know what to expect.
> Even if we gave the WG a small list of choices 9as small as two) we
> are introducing confusion.
> At the same time, asking the WG to discuss such issues is putting a
> new problem on the WG's plate.  They have plenty to do, and a hard
> enough time doing it.  Getting into arguments about whether, for their
> particular situation, some particular restriction is acceptable (or a
> good idea, or a bad idea) when it is not central to their task is just
> a bad idea.

Working groups that don't care about this issue don't have to.  It
only has to be discussed if someone in a WG is interested in
discussing it.  Otherwise it is up to the document author, as long as
the rights granted are within what the IETF require.

Some working groups are interested in requiring that their
specifications meet certain additional IPR restrictions, which doesn't
hold everywhere in the IETF.  Compare the DNSEXT's desire to not
consider any proposal to solve key-rollover that is encumbered by any
patent.  I believe IETF WG's should have the powers to decide things
like that, on a consensual basis, as long as the IETF have the
sufficient rights to publish documents and get things done.

/Simon

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