[saag] Re: on derivative work rights statements in emails to Security Area mailing lists

On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 05:18:15PM -0500, Paul Wouters wrote:
> [...]

[BTW, your post as rendered flows very weirdly for me, with line breaks
in odd places.]

I believe it's clear that posts to an IETF mailing list must de minimis
allow for:

 - archival

 - modifications of the form that most courteous participants do perform

   (Such as, but not limited to: quoting, trimming quoted text, re-
   flowing quoted text to keep lines short, marking ellisions.  It is
   the responsibility of those who reply to ensure that quoted text
   remains reasonably close to the original, and it is their liability
   should they twist quoted text to the point of libel.)

 - inclusion of proposed edits to Internet-Drafts and RFCs in new
   versions of Internet-Drafts (or in documents that are in AUTH-48)

 - use by readers in implementations (e.g., errata posted to the list)

It is clear that copyright and license notices that preclude these
things cannot be tolerated, or even _any_ copyright/license notices
(other, perhaps, than placing a post in the Public Domain) since that
would bruden readers with having to evaluate if and how such notices
conflict with the IETF's.

But footnotes that complain about such rules are perfectly reasonable.
Yes they are noisy protests, but so what?  As others have noted it is
trivial to ignore the protests when they appear in a footer.

Suppose the protest came in the form of a short URI to a lengthy doc --
would that be objectionable to you?  I.e., is it the act of
_protesting_, the _contents_, that it is inlined in the post on the
list, its _length_, or... just what is the specific objection to the
protest footer?

I'm a little more concerned about the editing of _attachments_ to
_appeals_ sent to the mailing list.  Even an edit to add a NOTE WELL to
an attachment seems unnecessary: the IESG can always post such notes
alongside attached appeal materials.  That said I never looked to see
what the edits to attached material were that triggered the
participant's protests.

Surely the rules regarding posting must also apply to attachments in
general, but this does not mean that the IESG should -though it may-
apply gratuitous edits to appelants' materials.  Just because one can
does not mean one should.

One thing I've noticed is that the AD (you) and the IESG have not
mentioned the specifics of the edits in question, or even the motivation
for the rule in question (which I infer to be: to enable mailing list
discussion at all; see above).

The feeling one gets following this saga is that you are talking past
each other, and that you are itching to reach for that sweet ban hammer.
I urge you not to ban the participant in question, not over a protest in
a footer.

Nico

PS: This entire post could be considered a sort of a protest, I suppose,
    though that is not my intent.  Perhaps even this postscript.  You
    really should not ban me for this post either, nor for this "footer".

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