Derivative Works

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 https://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 7 November 2026.¶

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2026 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 (https://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 Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

This document updates Rights Contributors Provide to the IETF Trust [RFC5378].¶

2. Derivative Works

In [RFC5378], there is a quite expansive definition of "Contribution". There is also a mechanism described that limits the right to produce derivative works. This mechanism applies to Contributions. This update narrows that clause to technical specifications, like Internet-Drafts or other specifications. It no longer applies to correspondence, such as email, appeals, or YouTube videos of IETF meetings. Inserting those clauses makes it difficult for people to respond, and inhibits collaboration. The very point of collaborating about the internet over the internet.¶

IETF correspondence MUST NOT include restrictions on derivative works. This restriction covers text that is intentionally inserted and also includes automatically inserted terms inserted by corporate email software. Both variations are disruptive.¶

It is always possible to publish an Internet-Draft with a restrictive derivative works clause.¶

All other Rights Contributors Provide to the IETF Trust [RFC5378] remain in place. Please don't be annoying.¶

3. Conventions and Definitions

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶

4. Security Considerations

This document prevents a Denial-of-Service attack.¶

5. IANA Considerations

This document has no IANA actions.¶

6. Normative References

[RFC2026]

Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, DOI 10.17487/RFC2026, October 1996, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2026>.

[RFC2119]

Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.

[RFC5378]

Bradner, S., Ed. and J. Contreras, Ed., "Rights Contributors Provide to the IETF Trust", BCP 78, RFC 5378, DOI 10.17487/RFC5378, November 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5378>.

[RFC8174]

Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

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