Re: free licensing of TEI Guidelines
Anthony DeRobertis wrote:
> On Feb 12, 2004, at 12:45, Henning Makholm wrote:
>>> Putting our own forms into TEI's namespace would be similar to
>>> claiming that they said something they did not.
>>
>> No it isn't - not unless you *explicitly* claim that it was TEI who
>> said it.
>
> If TEI's namespace is something like 'tei-consortium' and there is no
> technical reason things have to be added there (I don't think there is;
> aren't namespaces just to prevent collisions?) then I think it is
> perfectly reasonable to argue that things in there appear to originate
> with the TEI Consortium.
>
> I think the TEI Consortium would have a reasonable case against ---
> under trademark law --- someone who did it without making it *very*
> clear that his extensions are non-standard and are not endorsed by the
> TEI Consortium.
>
> Is there any good reason that I'd ever want to infringe on TEI's
> namespace, as opposed to using my own? I was under the impression that
> the whole point of namespaces was to make it clear what standard
> something comes from, and to prevent collisions.
>
Claiming endorsement by TEI without permission is definitely not
allowed, and this restriction is perfectly DFSG-free. However,
trademarks cannot be applied to functional elements, and a namespace
seems like a functional element, since a program reading the XML/SGML
could check the namespace and fail if it is not a given value. Any
restriction that attempts to require modified specifications or files to
be distinguishable from the originals _by a program_ would be non-free,
and would not be allowed by trademark law anyway. The desired
restriction here, which is perfectly free, is that a _person_ can
distinguish between the original and the modified version, because of
the lack of endorsement.
- Josh Triplett
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