Re: [Techspec] RFC Author Count and IPR

On Wed, 24 May 2006, Bob Braden wrote:

>
>  *>
>  *> I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that limits the
>  *> number of authors is in conflict with the IETF IPR policies.  The RFC
>  *> Editor currently limits the author count to five people.  Recent IPR
>  *> WG discussions make it clear to me that authors retain significant copyright.
>
>
> Note that the number 5 is not magic here.  When the phenomenon of
> balooning lists of authors (say, one or more from every telecom vendor
> you ever heard of) was first noticed, there was a discussion on the
> IETF list.  The community consensus was that author list inflation was
> "un-IETF".  I don't recall the details (there may have been a last call
> from the IESG, but I am not sure), but it was left to the RFC Editor to
> formulate the precise guideline.  Five seemed like a reasonable limit.
> Do you like 6 better?
>
> We do tend to push back (via the WG chairs) a bit on more than 5
> authors, since we knew that if there were many exceptions granted,
> everyone would discover they needed an exception, defeating the purpose
> of the limitation.  We have found that almost everyone affected by
> the limit has understood the problem and been very cooperative in
> keeping to it.
>
> I do not recall the IPR issue raised before.

a little history:

28 authors!
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/authdistr.html

20 authors!
http://www.arkko.com/tools/stats/authdistr.html

Bob -

I think the 5 author rule applies to the listing in the ID/RFC header 
and not to the authors listed under "Author Information" - is that 
correct?

- lel

> Bob Braden for the RFC Editor
>
>
>
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Lucy E. Lynch 				Academic User Services
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