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cc-licenses - Re: Licenses for XML Schemas and the content of associated XMLdocuments

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: "Steven Ericsson-Zenith" <steven AT semeiosis.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Re: Licenses for XML Schemas and the content of associated XMLdocuments
  • Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 21:16:45 -0800

Mike Linksvayer wrote ..
> Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
> > I am about to release an XML schema associated with one of my projects
> and felt
> > that copyright was the right claim and not an open source license.
>
> Open source licenses rely on copyright, as do Creative Commons licenses.

An open source license also licenses the use of intellectual property - not
only
the copyright of the source. Copyright pertains only to the substantive
document
it is applied to - not the intellectaul property within. Or am I mistaken ?

>
> > I want to make the schema publicly available and encourage others to
> freely use
> > it and generate it but I'd like to maintain some benevolent dictatorship
> :-)
> > over derivative works.
> [...]
> > 1. The XML schema itself.
> > 2. The content in generated instances of the metadata.
>
> I'm not familiar with existing practices for licensing schemas.
> Presumably you hold copyright in the schema and you can license it
> however you wish.

I've concluded that a Creative Commons license with a restriction on
derivatives
will likely do the job for the schema.

>
> I'm not sure from the above whether you want to assert that instance
> documents are derivatives of the schema. I'm not sure such an assertion
> would hold up in any case.

There are two issues in the case I have in mind: the instance documents and
the document metadata within them. The schema itself carries a requirement
that a copyright statement be provided that discloses the copyright of the
source
document.

The question is then, what can one say about the copyright of the instance
document - most of us, I think, will assume that it is it the copyright of
the
service that generated the instance. As an author I might prefer that the
copyright belong to me - or a service might wish to assert such to be the
case.

It follows also that use of the terms and form of the XML structure is a use
of
some copyright. I'd just like to see that clarified in a license.

With respect,
Steven



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