[legal] Draft OpenID Intellectual Property RightsPolicy for Review

[Simon Josefsson]

"Gabe Wachob" <gabe.wachob at amsoft.net> writes:

> Simon-
> 	The licenses you cite are licenses around software. The licenses
> discussed in the IPR policy are around specifications. Much of the language
> in GPL simply doesn't make sense (e.g. GPL talks about "source" and "object"
> - simply inapposite here). 

The GPL is used by a few projects for documentation.  For example,
Debian uses the GPL for their installation guide:
http://www.us.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/

> 	Also, I don't think the Debian Free Software Guidelines apply in any
> sensical way here either - I don't see how the required copyright license
> here restricts using any implementation of OpenID in any field of endeavor.

Right.  But I believe it would restrict Debian from including the OpenID
standard in their archives (they could distribute it in 'non-free'
though).

The proposed rules would also prevent all OpenID implementations from
re-using portions of the text in the standard, for documentation, which
may be a typical real-world scenario.

> 	Creative Commons is *more* applicable - though even there, the
> emphasis is on sharing and derivative works - the question is to what extent
> derivatives of OpenID specifications need to be allowed by the copyright
> policy. It would be a distinct departure from normal standards making specs
> to create a license as liberal as any of the CC licenses. 

Yeah, but I thought OpenID was intended to be more liberal than most
other standards! :)

Btw, the Unicode Consortium uses a liberal license for their standards,
see exhibit 1 of <http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html>.

> 	So in short, I think we're actually enabling more openness by
> explicitly allowing, *without any affirmative action on the part of the
> original authors* the preparation of derivative works within the umbrella of
> the OpenID community. 

My point is that this is still far from a specification licensed under
"the most liberal license available".

Thanks,
Simon