What is an Author of an IETF Stream Draft?
draft-carpenter-whats-an-author-00

Abstract

This draft suggests guidelines for assigning authorship in IETF Internet-Drafts. It also discusses the related issues of named contributors and acknowledgements.

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 October 26, 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.

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction and Scope
• 2. Authors
• 3. Contributors
• 4. Editors
• 5. List of Acknowledgements
• 6. Intellectual Property Rights
• 7. Security Considerations
• 8. IANA Considerations
• 9. Acknowledgements
• 10. Change log
• 11. Informative References
• Author's Address

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 contributors, and what acknowledgements are appropriate. The guidelines below are aimed at Internet-Drafts in the IETF publication stream [RFC5741]. They are intended to be compatible with the RFC Editor's style guide [RFC7322] and with the RFC Editor's authorship policies.

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.

People who did not make any such substantial contribution should not be listed as authors. 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.

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 "Editors" and list all 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.

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. 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. Intellectual Property Rights

None of the above affects intellectual property rights. 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 does not mean the same thing as the word "Contributor" used in BCP 79 [RFC3979], which is broader. That BCP should be consulted by anyone concerned about the IETF requirement for disclosure of intellectual property rights.

7. Security Considerations

None, really.

8. IANA Considerations

This memo includes no request to IANA.

9. Acknowledgements

Valuable comments were received from TBD.

10. Change log

draft-carpenter-whats-an-author-00, 2015-04-24: original version.

11. Informative References

Author's Address