Below are the definitions of some common words and phrases you will find throughout this website.
- “Contribution”: any submission to the IETF intended by the Contributor for publication as all or part of an Internet-Draft or RFC (except for RFC Editor Contributions described here) and any statement made within the context of an IETF activity. Such statements include oral statements in IETF sessions as well as written and electronic communications, made at any time or place, that are addressed to:
o the IETF plenary session,
o any IETF working group or portion thereof,
o any Birds of a Feather (BOF) session,
o the IESG, or any member thereof on behalf of the IESG,
o the IAB, or any member thereof on behalf of the IAB,
o any IETF mailing list, including the IETF list itself, any working group or design team list, or any other list functioning under IETF auspices,
o the RFC Editor or the Internet-Drafts function (except for some RFC Editor Contributions).
Statements made outside of an IETF session, mailing list, or other function, that are clearly not intended to be input to an IETF activity, group, or function are not IETF Contributions.
b. “Contributor”: an individual submitting a Contribution.
c. “Indirect Contributor”: any person who has materially or substantially contributed to a Contribution without being personally involved in its submission to the IETF.
d. “Copyright”: the legal right granted to an author in a document or other work of authorship under applicable law. A “copyright” is not equivalent to a “right to copy”. Rather a copyright encompasses all of the exclusive rights that an author has in a work, such as the rights to copy, publish, distribute and create derivative works of the work. An author often cedes these rights to his or her employer or other parties as a condition of employment or compensation.
e. “IETF”: in the context of this document, the IETF includes all individuals who participate in meetings, working groups, mailing lists, functions, and other activities that are organized or initiated by ISOC, the IESG, or the IAB under the general designation of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), but solely to the extent of such participation.
f. “IETF Documents”: RFCs and Internet-Drafts that are used in the IETF Standards Process as defined in 1(g). This is identical to the “IETF stream” defined in [RFC4844].
i. “Internet-Draft”: temporary documents used in the IETF Standards Process. Internet-Drafts are posted on the IETF web site by the IETF Secretariat. As noted in Section 2.2 of RFC 2026, Internet-Drafts have a nominal maximum lifetime of six months in the IETF Secretariat’s public directory.
k. “RFC”: the publication series used by the IETF among others. RFCs are published by the RFC Editor. Although RFCs may be superseded in whole or in part by subsequent RFCs, the text of an RFC is not altered once published in RFC form. (See [RFC2026] Section 2.1.)
License: a grant by the holder of a copyright or patent to another of any of the rights embodied in the copyright or patent short of an assignment of all rights [Merriam-Webster]
Trademark: a word, phrase, symbol, and/or design that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others. [USPTO]
Right to copy