Subject: RE: archives (was The other parts of the report....

From: "Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 12:21:32 -0700

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
Of
> Joe Touch
> Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2004 10:42 AM
> To: Kai Henningsen
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: archives (was The other parts of the report....
> 
> 
> 
> Kai Henningsen wrote:
Joe,

You mention a potential chilling effect an authors if the IETF
maintained an archive of past drafts, but the text in RFC 2026 is pretty
clear. Check the paragraph #1 in section 10.3.1. It says "the
contributor ... grant an unlimited perpetual, non-exclusive,
royalty-free, world-wide right and license to the ISOC and the IETF
under any copyrights in the contribution." Note the words "unlimited
perpetual" -- definitely not "limited to 6 months". 

-- Christian Huitema 

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---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 13:02:33 -0700

> perpetual" -- definitely not "limited to 6 months". 

It's still unclear - the document contains required wording about its 
expiration, under the same document. The two statements are in conflict 
in that regard.

Joe

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 17:55:23 -0400

On Sunday, September 12, 2004, at 04:02 PM, Joe Touch wrote:
> expiration, under the same document. The two statements are in 
> conflict in that regard.

I have some problems with retroactively changing agreements, but
your concern here is lost on me.  Email, private correspondence, offline
discussions, and all sorts of things are referable.  You can't
stop people from referring to documents whether they're expired
or not, public or not, etc.

Melinda

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:03:02 -0700

> or not, public or not, etc.

Even the IETF distinguishes between normative refs and non-normative 
(though it has a penchant for wanting to redefine those words too). 
Private correspondence is not citable as a normative ref, nor are 
(currently) IDs.

Put them up in a public archive and that assertion is no longer true. It 
becomes appropriate to use them as normative refs.

Joe

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 18:11:27 -0400

> Private correspondence is not citable as a normative ref, nor are 

IDs aren't citable in RFCs at all, so I'm not sure why you brought
that up.  The distinction between normative
references is not that normative references can only be to formal
documents and informative references to more casual documents.  The
distinction is role-based.  Check out 
http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html#policy.refs

> Put them up in a public archive and that assertion is no longer true. 
> It becomes appropriate to use them as normative refs.

Sorry, not true.

Melinda

---

From: Bill Manning <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:31:58 -0700 (PDT)

% Joe,
% 
% You mention a potential chilling effect an authors if the IETF
% maintained an archive of past drafts, but the text in RFC 2026 is pretty
% clear. Check the paragraph #1 in section 10.3.1. It says "the
% contributor ... grant an unlimited perpetual, non-exclusive,
% royalty-free, world-wide right and license to the ISOC and the IETF
% under any copyrights in the contribution." Note the words "unlimited
% perpetual" -- definitely not "limited to 6 months". 
% 
% -- Christian Huitema 
% 
% _______________________________________________

me not being Joe.

	reconciling RFC 2026 language with the then current 
	boilerplate #3 leads to a conundrum.  Remember that the
	ID series and by extention the RFC series was designed
	to accomodate ideas and information that did not originate
	in the context of the IETF and for which the IETF did not
	expect to have any sort of change control or (by extention)
	any rights to said ideas. (objecting yet again to bits of
	RFC 2026... beating a dead horse)

	that said, the language of RFC 2026 was -never- clearly
	indicated to potential authors of IDs. the potential authors
	were presented w/ three choices, one of which directly 
	limited ISOC and the IETF to publication as a ID, with the
	implication that this was only valid for six months.

	reminds me of the urban development plans in the basement,
	w/o stairs, in a locked cabinet with the warning "beware lepard".
	
	that particular era seems fraught w/ conflicting directions
	and it would seem to be prudent to recognise the vagrities
	of conflicting instructions then, and focus on more productive
	shorter term objectives now.  
 
--bill
Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 17:43:58 -0700

>> It becomes appropriate to use them as normative refs.

The terms normative and non-normative existed long before the IETF. The 
idea that IDs shouldn't be cited non-normatively is an IETF-ism only.

Joe

---

From: "Theodore Ts'o" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:17:45 -0400

> becomes appropriate to use them as normative refs.

Private correspondence does not be come citable as a normative
reference just because someone makes a web-archive of their e-mail
available.  Neither does making I-D's publically available past their
expiration point make it "legal" for them to be referrenced in RFC's. 

If you are referring to people outside of the standards process
referencing expired I-D's, there are people doing this today, and even
shipping product today, based on expired I-D's.  It seems unlikely to
me that making such an archive available in a public fashion
(especially given that they are available today already if you know
where to look in the .iso images of the IETF proceedings-on-cdrom)
will likely change the future frequency of such "illegal" references
to I-D's.

						- Ted