[cc-licenses] Is BY-ND a good choice for an Internet XML-based protocol specification?
Lucas Gonze
lucas.gonze at gmail.com
Wed Jan 24 16:13:55 EST 2007
On 1/24/07, Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name> wrote:
> I'd have to disagree. The IETF has its own idiosyncratic copyright rules
> for RFCs and other contributions. It's worth reviewing RFC 3978, which I
> think is the latest update to these rules:
...
>
> In other words, if you're going the RFC route, it's probably best to not
> screw around with CC licenses and just stick with the IETF's rules.
One of the major goals of this revision of the XSPF spec was to become
more compatible with IETF (actually IESG) conventions, so I looked
into their copyright and patent resources very closely. What I found
was disappointing -- nothing that was applicable outside of the
IETF/IESG/IANA org chart.
The W3C's conventions for copyright and patent had about the same
limitations as the IETF's, with the added problem of a patent policy
which would be totally unacceptable at Xiph.org, the home of XSPF.
And needless to say, out in the ad-hoc-o-sphere where XSPF was born
things were in a truly random state. Specs at Xiph are under a
hodgepodge of improvised licensing arrangements which badly need work,
and the RSS 2.0 spec, for example, uses
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/, but has no patent
clause at all.
In any event, thanks to James Grimmelmann for the legal expertise.
I'm happy to learn that things are working, even if it is by accident.
:) (Though I am sorry that the ND clause is not going to help with
interoperability).
-Lucas Gonze
More information about the cc-licenses
mailing list