[ih] Who owns old RFCs ?

[Scott O. Bradner]

I do not recall any deliberate delay - it just worked out that way

yes, there was a short lived effort to get the authors/editors of old RFCs to sign their copyright over - Ray
had forms he would let you sign if you wanted to but he never pushed it and I have no idea if the signed
forms can be found - he also had a list of the people who had signed at one point

the primary reason, as I recall, was to ensure the ability for the IETF to make derivative  works based on old RFCs  

Scott

> On Apr 22, 2020, at 1:40 AM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Joe,
> 
> The inclusion of the ISOC copyright was mandated by RFC2026 (October 1996)
> for "all ISOC standards-related documentation" (remembering that the IETF
> looked to ISOC for legal backing), but I forget why it took a year to
> implement. Possibly ISI lawyers?
> 
> Regards
>   Brian Carpenter
> 
> On 22-Apr-20 16:43, Joseph Touch via Internet-history wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Apr 21, 2020, at 9:15 PM, John Gilmore via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I recommend that the IETF Trust assert that nobody owns the RFCs
>>> published before March 1989, and designate a period for anyone who
>>> claims a copyright in an RFC published between then and 1994 to approach
>>> the Trust to negotiate the claim,…
>> 
>> 
>> There’s still the period between 1994 and Oct 1998 (see below) to deal with, though. I recall the ISOC asking transfer of copyright for those works at some point, but not all were granted.
>> 
>> Also, note that not all DARPA contracts for work that generated RFCs explicitly indicated RFCs as a deliverable. NSF grants have no deliverables.
>> 
>> There is some information available at the RFC pages here:
>> https://www.rfc-editor.org/old/copyright.17Feb04.html <https://www.rfc-editor.org/old/copyright.17Feb04.html>
>> 
>> Note that this page links to a story about facts claimed to date back to 1988 that is not accurate; it implies that RFCs included an ISOC copyright statement before RFC2220 (Oct 1997), but they do not. Notably, that was exactly one year (to the month) before Jon’s passing.
>> 
>> Joe
>> 
> 
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