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  • From: "Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves" <justivo AT gmail.com>
  • To: cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-licenses] Is BY-ND a good choice for an Internet XML-based protocol specification?
  • Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 14:02:19 +0000

Hello people in this list,

I'm part of Xiph.Org Foundation, the group behind Vorbis, FLAC, Ogg,
etc. One of our team mates has been working for two years on a XML
protocol for playlists called XSPF. It is very promising. But as of
late, he decided to put a license on the specification document, which
is to be submited to the IETF as an RFC.

The license he chose was CC-BY-ND, because he is afraid that others
may create their own version of XSPF incompatible with his, hence he
believes the ND clause will prevent that. That may be true, but I'm
afraid it may also legally forbid others to build upon XSPF, because
that's exactly what the license states (i.e. one can't build upon this
work). In my interpretation that means no one is allowed to create a
parser for XSPF without his permission, and if that's so, XSPF is
going to bomb pretty hard, which is most unfortunate due to how great
it is.

So, I have two questions:
Whose interpretation is right? His or mine?

And if he is right and people are really able to build upon XSPF (just
unable to modify the specification), is BY-ND a good choice? Is a CC
license even a good choice for an RFC proposal at all?

Thank you for your attention,
Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves



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