Re: List moderator action

Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> Mon, 04 May 2026 09:30:55 +0200
Newsgroups	gmane.ietf.general
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
Brian E Carpenter <[email protected]> writes:

> On 03-May-26 07:32, Rob Sayre wrote:
>> Hi,
>> Apologies in advance for being a giant pain.
>> Lars Eggert <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>  > If you read Section 3.3 of RFC 5378 you will find the “specific
>>  > context” is about documents.
>> It is not. It is about "Contributions" in caps.
>> While I agree with the goal of the IESG statement, and the moderator
>> actions here, we have to go fix RFC 5378 for this one.
>
> What needs fixing? It says that the IETF requires the right to make
> derivative works of all contributions, which includes emails.
>
> The final paragraph of section 3.3 allows "no derivative works"
> legends only for two special cases: "information about proprietary
> technologies" and republishing standards from other SDOs. Most emails
> are neither of those cases; therefore "no derivative works" legends
> are forbidden.

Section 5.3 is clear and uses well-defined terms, and according to the
multiple legal advice I've gotten over the years, those are the terms
that are binding.

Regarding the entire section 3, consider that its title is:

   3. Exposition of Why These Procedures Are the Way They Are .........6

The section is written informally and try to explain the legal words in
other ways.  The introduction of the document re-inforces this:

   Section 1 provides definitions used in these policies.  Sections 3
   and 4 of this document explain the rationale for these provisions.
   Sections 1, 2, 5, and 6 of this document are normative, the other
   sections are informative.  RFC 3979 (BCP 79) [RFC3979] deals with

Read that again: Section 3 has no normative bearing.

It is unfortunate that the IESG made a statement that enforce a
particular legal interpretation which is based on content in Section 3.
That puts the IETF into legal jeopardy and opens up for anti-trust
and/or anti-openness risks, and harms the reputation of the IETF as an
open standardization organization.

/Simon
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