Subject: Re: [Techspec] RFC Author Count and IPR

From: Bob Braden <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 11:56:15 -0700 (PDT)

*> 
  *> I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that limits the 
  *> number of authors is in conflict with the IETF IPR policies.  The RFC 
  *> Editor currently limits the author count to five people.  Recent IPR 
  *> WG discussions make it clear to me that authors retain significant copyright.

Note that the number 5 is not magic here.  When the phenomenon of
balooning lists of authors (say, one or more from every telecom vendor
you ever heard of) was first noticed, there was a discussion on the
IETF list.  The community consensus was that author list inflation was
"un-IETF".  I don't recall the details (there may have been a last call
from the IESG, but I am not sure), but it was left to the RFC Editor to
formulate the precise guideline.  Five seemed like a reasonable limit.
Do you like 6 better?

We do tend to push back (via the WG chairs) a bit on more than 5
authors, since we knew that if there were many exceptions granted,
everyone would discover they needed an exception, defeating the purpose
of the limitation.  We have found that almost everyone affected by
the limit has understood the problem and been very cooperative in
keeping to it.

I do not recall the IPR issue raised before.

Bob Braden for the RFC Editor

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From: "Lucy E. Lynch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 13:05:00 -0700 (PDT)

> I do not recall the IPR issue raised before.

a little history:

28 authors!
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/authdistr.html

20 authors!
http://www.arkko.com/tools/stats/authdistr.html

Bob -

I think the 5 author rule applies to the listing in the ID/RFC header 
and not to the authors listed under "Author Information" - is that 
correct?

- lel

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>

-- 
Lucy E. Lynch 				Academic User Services
Computing Center			University of Oregon
llynch  @darkwing.uoregon.edu		(541) 346-1774

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From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 10:44:34 +0200

Bob Braden wrote:
> formulate the precise guideline.
The Last Call on draft-rfc-editor-author-lists was issued on May 20, 
2002, and the IESG approved that document on August 27, 2002, according 
to the tracker:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi?command=view_id&dTag=8778&rfc_flag=0

On Jan 3, 2005, it was marked "dead" based on the fact that the text had 
been incorporated into the 2223bis draft.
So it's been almost 4 years since IETF consensus was declared for this 
policy.

                               Harald