On 5/31/21 3:37 PM, Salz, Rich wrote:
It's not a legal necessity, as everyone who authors a draft that becomes an RFC grants IETF the permission to create derivative works. But it is common courtesy and longstanding practice, and I would claim a useful one.* IMO it's fine to contact the authors of an original RFC and point out that an update is needed. But it's really presumptuous and rude to appoint oneself a co-author of a bis document and suggest that the original authors should become co-authors. IMO that should be a last resort option, for the cases where the original authors aren't willing to revise their document, not the first suggestion made.I am not sure I understand you. Are you saying that once an RFC is authored, any BIS work must first be offered to the original authors? If so, what about when the WG has been shut (LAMPS instead of PKIX)? Or this case, where someone wrote a draft and the WG adopted it. Should the WG then ask the new author to wait until they’ve heard from the original authors? In this case, was I mistaken to submit a draft without first contacting Jeff and Peter before doing anything?
The fact that the original WG has shut down is irrelevant. The WG did not write the document.
It certainly seems inappropriate to claim co-authorship on a document, without the blessing of the original authors, if one has made only relatively minor contributions to that document.
More generally, a document's authors have a unique role in keeping a document coherent. It's very easy for a new co-author to destroy that coherence by making lots of seemingly minor changes that subtly change the meaning of the text. If there's any desire to maintain backward compatibility with the old version of the document, or with old implementations, updates should be done with extreme care. The new co-author(s) may not understand the reasons behind word choices in the old document.
Keith
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