John,
On 2009-03-13 11:00, John C Klensin wrote:
...
As usual, there are edge cases in which the author may have
obtained most of the rights needed but _still_ believe that
there are some plausible claimants out there (or may have gotten
one rejection when the request was made). I do not believe
those situations should lead to a demand that submitting authors
identify every Contributor, their contributions, and the status
of their rights grants to the IETF -- that would just be too
burdensome for its value. It is partially consideration of
those mixed cases --something that the WG never, as least as far
as I can remember, actively considered-- that leads me to
believe that the original conclusion was incorrect, i.e., that
the responsibilities for going around gathering up releases and
licenses and then guaranteeing that everything had been found
should be transferred to authors as a condition for document
posting.
We largely agree. The idea that authors/editors can reasonably
be expected to give such a guarantee is untenable in the general
case. The issue seems to be whether they (and as Harald rightly
insists, persons helping them) can reasonably be expected to do
so in straightforward cases, or whether we just forget about
it and stick a red flag on any draft containing old material.