Subject: Re: How IETF treats contributors

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 16:48:23 +0200

Hadmut,

you made a complaint about the SPF draft to the IESG just prior to the 
March IETF meting in Korea.

I'd like to reproduce the answer I sent you at that time here:

> Dear Hadmut:
>
> Thank you for your inquiry.  Obviously, there is nothing that the IETF
> can do regarding the many activities that you mention as occurring
> outside the IETF process (e.g., the SPF list, the various newspaper
> articles, etc.)
>
> With respect to your complaint regarding draft-mengwong-spr-00.txt (the
> "SPF I-D") I would like to refer you to RFC 3667 "IETF Rights in
> Contributions", which updates the relevant sections of RFC 2026 regarding
> contributions to the IETF standards process - this document lists the
> various kinds of IPR that were deemed to be relevant to the IETF process.
>
> Under Section 3.4.a of RFC 3667, each contributor of an IETF document
> represents that: "The Contribution properly acknowledges all major
> Contributors.  A major Contributor is any person who has materially or
> substantially contributed to the IETF Contribution."  In addition, under
> Section 3.4.c, the Contributor represents that he has the full right to
> grant IETF a license under the copyrights in the Contribution. This seems
> to be the part of IETF procedure relevant to your complaint.
>
> If you believe that the SPF I-D infringes your copyrights or that you
> should be listed as an author of the SPF I-D, you should follow the
> procedures for conflict resolution described in Section 6.5 of RFC 2026.
> I suggest that when you submit your request, you identify the particular
> sections of the SPF-ID that you believe are infringing on your
> copyrights, together with the sections of your original publications that
> you believe have been infringed. If you believe that you have not been
> properly acknowledged for your contribution to the SPF work, please
> provide details of what acknowledgement you would deem correct and
> adequate.
>
> You may choose to discuss this further with the relevant AD for the MARID
> BOF (Steve Bellovin), or to send directly to the IESG.
>
> While the IETF is not a court of law, our processes are intended to
> facilitate the fair and equitable resolution of disputes within the IETF
> standards process. We need to facilitate the open exchange of ideas - but
> we need to make sure are being treated fairly in the process, or the
> exchange of ideas will eventually stop.
>
> Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.
>
>             Harald Alvestrand, IETF Chair

I have not seen a reply from you to the IESG, so I do not know what has 
happened since that time.

                           Harald

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From: Nathaniel Borenstein <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 22:37:21 -0400

On Aug 30, 2004, at 7:05 PM, John Day wrote:

> The best solution is to remove all authorship from all Internet 
> standards, then there will be no problems.  This isn't suppose to be 
> an ego trip. If people really think the documents are important, they 
> don't need their names on them.  If they need their name on it, they 
> are doing it for the wrong reasons.

I would argue against this on the grounds that we want to encourage 
standards work as an attractive career path.  If we want bright young 
people to put work into standards, it is appropriate to give credit for 
that work.  Writing a good standard, and building a consensus around 
it, is a challenging set of tasks that requires a combination of 
technical and political skills that are all too rare, and sometimes 
hard to recognize.  If we want more companies to send their best people 
to work in IETF groups, we need to provide something for those people 
to put on their resumes when they succeed, to help build their career 
path.

I'm all for doing things for the good of the community, but a major 
reason IBM gives me considerable latitude to think about it that way is 
that I have my name on the MIME standard.  It's true that I would have 
done the MIME work whether I was going to get credit for it or not, but 
I can tell you that having my name associated with it has made a big 
difference in my career.  I'd like future standards writers to be able 
to aspire to a similar outcome.  -- Nathaniel

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 22:57:49 -0700 (PDT)

> to put on their resumes when they succeed, to help build their career

I completely agree with this assessment.

> to aspire to a similar outcome.  -- Nathaniel

Being another coauthor of MIME hasn't exactly hurt my prospects either.

				Ned

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From: grenville armitage <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 04:37:42 +1000

Nathaniel Borenstein wrote:
	[..]
> If we want bright young
> hard to recognize.

Agreed.

cheers,
gja
-- 
Grenville Armitage
http://caia.swin.edu.au
I come from a LAN downunder.