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Differences from draft-carpenter-whats-an-author-00.txt
Network Working Group B. Carpenter
Internet-Draft Univ. of Auckland
Intended status: Informational May 30, 2015
Expires: December 1, 2015
What is an Author of an IETF Stream Draft?
draft-carpenter-whats-an-author-01
Abstract
This draft suggests guidelines for assigning authorship in IETF
stream Internet-Drafts. It also discusses the related issues of
acknowledgements, editors and contributors.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on December 1, 2015.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction and Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. List of Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Exceptions and Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. Intellectual Property Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
11. Change log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
12. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Introduction and Scope
The question sometimes comes up of who should be listed as the
author(s) of a draft, who should be listed as editors or
contributors, and what acknowledgements are appropriate. The
guidelines below are aimed at Internet-Drafts in the IETF publication
stream [RFC5741]. Any inconsistency with [RFC7221] is unintentional,
and related issues are discussed in
[I-D.crocker-rfc2418bis-wgguidelines]. The guidelines are intended
to be compatible with the RFC Editor's style guide [RFC7322], with
the RFC Editor's authorship policies <http://www.rfc-
editor.org/pipermail/rfc-interest/2015-May/008869.html> and with the
(draft) IESG statement on "surprised" authors
<http://trac.tools.ietf.org/group/iesg/trac/wiki/SurprisedAuthors>.
This draft has been written purely to aid discussion and is not
expected to be published as an RFC.
2. Authors
Authors are people who have made a substantial creative contribution
to the document. Normally this means writing text or drawing
diagrams. Occasionally, with the consent of the other authors, it
means making some other substantial creative contribution to the
document, for example by writing a software implementation as part of
the design process. It's a matter of judgement whether a person who
simply makes a key intellectual contribution should rank as an
author.
People who did not make any such substantial contribution should not
be listed as authors. Funding support, managerial or supervisory
status, and CV embellishment don't count.
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In normal circumstances, people should not be listed as authors
without their explicit permission.
The practical impact is that the authors will be listed as such on
the front page if the document becomes an RFC, and in public
bibliographies.
3. Contributors
Contributors are people who made smaller creative contributions to
the document than the authors, for example providing initial ideas
that others have transformed into publishable text, or drafting only
a few paragraphs.
People who did not make any such contribution should not be listed as
contributors. People should not normally be listed as contributors
without their explicit permission.
The dividing line between contributors and authors is a matter of
judgement and cannot be rigidly defined. However, the RFC Editor's
policy is to query any document that has more than five listed
authors. Any list of more than five authors will need to be
negotiated if the document is approved for publication as an RFC.
4. Editors
When a document has a large number of contributors and potential
authors, it may be appropriate to designate one or two people as both
"Authors" and "Editors" and list the others as contributors. The
editors will indeed do the actual work of editing the document on
behalf of the community. The practical impact of this is that the
editors will be listed as such on the front page if the document
becomes an RFC, and in public bibliographies.
In some cases, it may be appropriate to retain a list of authors of
which one or two are designated as editors. What matters is "truth
in advertising": the people involved should all feel happy that the
designations of editors, authors and contributors are fair and
accurate.
It's worth noting that in some people's opinion, once a draft has
been adopted by a WG, all future changes are performed as an editing
action on behalf of the WG. Traditionally, the IETF has chosen to
retain the word "Author" in most cases, with the formal designation
of editors being exceptional.
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5. List of Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements should be given to people who have made significant
creative contributions smaller than those from the authors and
contributors, or to people who have made useful comments, provided
critical reviews, or otherwise contributed significantly to the
development of the document. If ideas have been adopted from other
written sources, including IETF documents, clearly a reference is an
ethical requirement, but an acknowledgement might also be
appropriate.
Acknowledgements may also be given to people or organizations that
have given material support and assistance, but this should not
include the authors' regular employers.
An acknowledgement does not signify that the person acknowledged
agrees with the document. In general, people who do not wish to be
listed as an author or a contributor, but have in fact made a
significant contribution, should be given an acknowledgement.
6. Exceptions and Discussions
It goes without saying that normally nobody should be listed as an
author, contributor or editor against their will. Ideally, the
parties involved will agree among themselves, or defer to the
judgement of the WG Chairs or Area Directors. Practice may vary
between WGs. However, we need flexibility to deal with unusual
cases, such as these:
o An acknowledgement is a statement of fact (the person contributed
to the discussion), and in some cases may be included even if the
person acknowledged objects, for example if they made a suggestion
that might later be viewed as prior art.
o An author or contributor may deserve to be listed, even if they
cannot be contacted when a document is updated after a long
interval. It is quite common to list the original authors of an
RFC in a "bis" draft, even if they are long gone from IETF
participation.
o In particular, an author or contributor might be deceased.
7. Intellectual Property Rights
None of the above directly affects intellectual property rights.
However, it's worth noting that if a draft includes complete
acknowledgements and references, it will be much simpler to identify
its status as possible prior art.
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Copyright in IETF documents is governed by BCP 78 [RFC5378] and its
predecessors, the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions, and applicable
national and international law.
The word "contributor" used in this draft might not mean the same
thing as the word "Contributor" used in BCP 79 [RFC3979]. That BCP
should be consulted by anyone concerned about the IETF requirement
for disclosure of intellectual property rights.
8. Security Considerations
None, really.
9. IANA Considerations
This memo includes no request to IANA.
10. Acknowledgements
Valuable comments were received from Loa Andersson, Andy Bierman,
Carsten Bormann, Dave Crocker, Tom Petch, Yaron Sheffer, and Joe
Touch.
11. Change log
draft-carpenter-whats-an-author-01, 2015-05-30: incorporating
community comments, citing RFC Editor and IESG statements.
draft-carpenter-whats-an-author-00, 2015-04-24: original version.
12. Informative References
[I-D.crocker-rfc2418bis-wgguidelines]
dcrocker, d. and R. Droms, "IETF Working Group Guidelines
and Procedures", draft-crocker-rfc2418bis-wgguidelines-00
(work in progress), March 2015.
[RFC3979] Bradner, S., "Intellectual Property Rights in IETF
Technology", BCP 79, RFC 3979, March 2005.
[RFC5378] Bradner, S. and J. Contreras, "Rights Contributors Provide
to the IETF Trust", BCP 78, RFC 5378, November 2008.
[RFC5741] Daigle, L., Kolkman, O., and IAB, "RFC Streams, Headers,
and Boilerplates", RFC 5741, December 2009.
[RFC7221] Farrel, A. and D. Crocker, "Handling of Internet-Drafts by
IETF Working Groups", RFC 7221, April 2014.
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[RFC7322] Flanagan, H. and S. Ginoza, "RFC Style Guide", RFC 7322,
September 2014.
Author's Address
Brian Carpenter
Department of Computer Science
University of Auckland
PB 92019
Auckland 1142
New Zealand
Email: brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com
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