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

On 21/11/2025 20:10, Nico Williams wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 21, 2025 at 01:49:37PM -0800, Christian Huitema wrote:
>> I think this boils down to an argument about power and authority of the
>> IETF. [...]
> 
> As we often say: there is no IETF protocol police.
> 
> We can -and do- say no to some things, it's just not the same thing as
> being an enforcer of "thou shalt not do X".
> 
> The specific disagreement I was referring to was about whether a WG
> should adopt a given work item.  I think DJB thought that by not
> adopting it the work wouldn't get done.
> 
> My point to DJB is that because the necessary codepoints have been
> assigned (and would have been even if the WG did not want it, short of
> doing the work of closing the registry) the WG cannot block that work.
> We only get to decide whether that work will be done "in the WG" or
> outside the WG, and if it's going to get done, then it's better to do it
> "in" the WG than outside it.

[I haven't followed this discussion or even the entire thread... but 
happened to read this particular email]

The statement above seems to indicate that if someone wants to do X, and 
it can be inferred that the work will be carried out at the IETF or 
elsewhere, it's better for the IETF to take up that work.

However, that's not my understannding of how things are supposed to 
work: IETF RFCs represent IETF consensus. And if something is known and 
understood to be a bad idea, I do think that the IETF shouldn't work on 
that. If anything, it's better that such work is carried out elsewhere, 
rather than having bad ideas rubber-stamped by the IETF "because they 
would otherwise be pursued elsewhere, anyway".

Thanks,
-- 
Fernando Gont
e-mail: [email protected]
PGP Fingerprint: 7F7F 686D 8AC9 3319 EEAD C1C8 D1D5 4B94 E301 6F01

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