This has been an area of contention for a long time!
RFC7322, the RFC Editor' Style Guide says
The total number of authors or editors on the first page is generally limited to five individuals and their affiliations. If there is a request for more than five authors, the stream- approving body needs to consider if one or two editors should have primary responsibility for this document, with the other individuals listed in the Contributors or Acknowledgements section. There must be a direct correlation of authors and editors in the document header and the Authors' Addresses section. These are the individuals that must sign off on the document during the AUTH48 process and respond to inquiries, such as errata.
This means that the ultimate responsibility for determining the number of authors on the front page rests with the approving body which, for the IETF stream, is the IESG. The IESG should try hard to reduce this number to conform to the Style Guide, but may make exceptions.
The RFC Editor requests that when exceptions are made an RFC Editor Note is added to explicitly report the fact.
The content of this page was last updated on 2014-10-13. It was migrated from the old Trac wiki on 2023-02-17.