[OpenID board] Making statement that XML sources of the specs are unofficial

Mike Jones Michael.Jones at microsoft.com
Tue Aug 12 02:54:35 UTC 2014


Here’s my comments on your proposed actions:

1. Declare clearly in http://openid.net/specs/ that HTML files are authoritative and others are not.

We could do this in a readme.txt file there.

2. Remove all XML files from http://openid.net/specs/.

I strongly oppose doing this.  The files provide useful documentation on what has changed between versions.  They’re a lot easier to diff than the outputs.  Also, we could lose svn.openid.net at some point, which is the only other place that these source files are authoritatively recorded for the foundation.

3. Put explanatory note in the XML files that they are not official and ipr="..." and other tags are there just to satisfy the tools.

Agreed

4. Use ipr="none" instead of ipr="full200902" in the XML file.

Agreed.  And we should say that the “Notices” section contains the pertinent IPR information.

5. Put the link to the OpenID IPR Policy to the text "The OpenID Intellectual Property Rights policy"

I would not include links to specific IPR documents in the comment because we update these from time to time. If you want to say anything in the comment, you could just say that current versions of the OpenID IPR Policy and Process documents can be found at openid.net.  The board has already decided that the text in the Notices section is sufficient in this regard.

                                                            Thanks,
                                                            -- Mike

From: openid-board-bounces at lists.openid.net [mailto:openid-board-bounces at lists.openid.net] On Behalf Of Nat Sakimura
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2014 7:52 PM
To: openid-board
Subject: [OpenID board] Making statement that XML sources of the specs are unofficial

Dear board members,

I have found out that the XML source code for our specifications are having the following.

<?rfc ipr="full200902"> and <?rfc private="Final">

which indicates that the file follows IETF's IPR rather than OpenID Foundation's, and it is a private note and not a public document.

As I found out, it was put there to satisfy the tool that we are using: xml2rfc.

In the time of OpenID Authentication 2.0, it was using <?rfc ipr="full3978">.

It is fine as long as these files are unofficial tool only, but there is no indication of it as it stands now.

Further investigation lead me to find out that these XML files were not recorded in official http://openid.net/specs/ folder before OpenID Connect.

In addition, I have found out that there is no link from the Connect specs to the OpenID IPR Policy although there is a verbal mention of it in the Copyright statement. The reference is not there so the readers cannot find what it is.

This lead me to think that we probably need to take the following actions:

1.     Declare clearly in http://openid.net/specs/ that HTML files are authoritative and others are not.
2.     Remove all XML files from http://openid.net/specs/.
3.     Put explanatory note in the XML files that they are not official and ipr="..." and other tags are there just to satisfy the tools.
4.     Use ipr="none" instead of ipr="full200902" in the XML file.
5.     Put the link to the OpenID IPR Policy to the text "The OpenID Intellectual Property Rights policy"
My proposal for the XML Comment is as follows:




<!--

NOTE on this XML File.



This XML file is a tool to produce the authoritative copy of OpenID Foundation spec.

The authoritative copy is the HTML, and the corresponding XML source is not authoritative.

The statement that ipr="none" is here only to satisfy the tool.

The IPR of this document is OpenID IPR Policy found at

http://openid.net/ipr/OpenID_IPR_Policy_(Final_Clean_20071221).pdf

and governed by OpenID Process found at

http://openid.net/wordpress-content/uploads/2010/01/OpenID_Process_Document_December_2009_Final_Approved.pdf.

The directive private="..." is here only to satisfy the tool and desired HTML output.

This is a public OIDF document and not an individual private memo as private="..." indicates.

-->

This is supposed to be put in at the top of the file right after the DOCTYPE declaration.

And my proposal for the /specs/ pages is to put the following after the first paragraph.

NOTE: HTML files are the authoritative version. All other formats are provided for the convenience of the readers.

Please discuss. After some discussion time, I will craft a motion for the email vote.
[https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif]

--
Nat Sakimura (=nat)
Chairman, OpenID Foundation
http://nat.sakimura.org/
@_nat_en
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