I thought that after 5 years of IETF syslog WG work, I’d already be through all potential sources of frustration. Wrong! Last Friday, I was notified that the otherwise ready-to-be-published RFC could not be published because the IETF requires a copyright assignment to the trust, in which the author must grant all rights. Of course, he must also do so on behalf of every contributor.
Quite frankly speaking, this is more or less impossible for this draft. Among the many reasons is that it would be extremely time-consuming to verify each and every (small) contribution from the past 5 years. Also, I copied (perfectly legal than) text from other RFCs, who do not know who contributed. There are more reasons, but I do not like to elaborate on all of them again.
The bottom line is that the syslog RFC series is again stalled. The IETF has at least identified there is a problem and a work-around is being discussed. A decision will be made on February, 15th. Let’s hope for the best, otherwise all the work would probably be lost.
This IMHO is also a good example on what a too-far streched system of intellectual property rights can do. This, and also software patents, are a threat to our freedom. The stop progress and unnecessarily limit out capabilities. Hopefully more and more people realize that and will tell their governments to stop this abusive system.