Re: SPARC Author Addendum compatibility

[John C Klensin <john at jck.com>]

--On Wednesday, 25 July, 2007 14:59 +0200 Brian E Carpenter
<brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 2007-07-25 03:18, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>> In the WG meeting today, it was strongly suggested that the
>> IETF would  benefit from having its rules for licences from
>> authors and authors'  rights be compatible with the SPARC
>> Author Addendum, which makes sure an  author continues to
>> have the right to reuse his contribution in other  contexts.
>...
 
>> With some massage to fit with our commonly used vocabulary, I
>> think  adding such a section to the -incoming document (and
>> explaining that our  intent is to be compatible with the
>> SPARC addendum) is a Good Thing.
>> 
> 
> Stating the intent is goodness (and as Simon says, the intent
> is even
> broader). But I wonder whether crafting the legal wording
> isn't yet
> another thing to punt to the Trust?

Having started this particular thread by pointing to the SPARC
stuff during the WG meeting, a few comments...

(1) Our traditional principle is that the author retains all
rights but gives the IETF permission to do certain things.  That
retention of rights applies not just to use of materials the
author put into the system (I-Ds and, given the text of the Note
Well, the principles behind which were always the intent,
mailing list postings, miscellaneous utterings, etc.) but also
to use of material in the RFCs post-editing and as published.

(2) There are arguments that are good enough to persuade me that
we should change that so that the IETF Trust ends up holding the
copyright in the RFC publication form of the work.  One can get
from here to there by various paths on which I'm not going to
comment, but the principle is that the RFCs should belong to the
IETF [Trust] and not the authors.    YMMD on that principle.

However, if one accepts that principle, even for purposes of
discussion, then retention of the author's rights as understood
historically (and as summarized in (1)) requires that the IETF
Trust irrevocably leave authors with those rights needed to do
substantially anything they could do under (1).  Two things are
_not_ sufficient for that purpose.  

	(i) The WG and IETF advise the IPR Trust to provide such
	a license.  This doesn't work because what the IETF
	and/or Trust can give, they can take back... if not for
	one particular document, then for the next request that
	comes along.
	
	(ii) Statement that the author retains all rights in the
	_original_ contribution (i.e., the I-D or equivalent).
	To preserve rights the authors have today, the authors
	must have fairly broad rights to use the RFC as
	published, not merely to use the pre-editing,
	pre-combination version.  

Note that, ironically given other decisions we have made, there
is a bit of the flavor of the GPL in this: Authors contribute
rights to the IETF but, in return, get those same rights back to
what the IETF, and the IETF's editing and publication processes,
derive from that document.   But, unlike the GPL, that reverse
grant does not need to be either global or contagious for this
purpose.


(3) I pointed to the SPARC stuff for two reasons.  One was to
point out that there is some precedent for authors making the
right things happen by reserving rights or by transferring
rights on condition of certain licenses being given to the
authors.  By making handing things over to the contingent on
such licenses, there is no issue of the IETF somehow deciding
that author use of published RFCs for their own purposes is a
revenue opportunity (as many academic publishers have done for
years).  It was _not_ to suggest that either the specific
language of the SPARC materials was right for us (our
terminology differs and that, at least, would need some mapping)
or that the SPARC-based rights were the precise set that were
necessary and sufficient for our needs.

The second reason was to point out that there are contributors
to the IETF and its work who can contribute under the existing
rules but who would be prohibited by their institutional
employers from contributing without something equivalent to (or
a superset of) the SPARC grant-back (or reservation) of rights.
That condition is very much connected to the SPARC text because
several institutions have written their rules to cite the SPARC
ones.   Unless we want to start telling people who have been
contributing actively to the IETF that they can't do it any
more, a new model of copyright ownership that would prevent them
from contributing ought to me, IMO, a complete non-starter.

      john


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