On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:33:14 +1000 Ben Finney wrote: > Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> writes: > > > As Executive Director of the XSF, I am willing to push for a change > > to the licensing so that the XEP licensing is consistent with the > > DFSG. > > Thank you for actively pursuing this worthwhile change. I would also like to thank Peter for that. > > > Although we need to complete some due diligence and come to > > consensus in our community before settling on a license, it appears > > to me that the MIT license would be appropriate. > > Yes, I'd agree with that. So would I. [...] > > However, the MIT license talks about software, not documentation or, > > more precisely in our case, protocol specifications. > > Yes. Only under an unnecessarily narrow definition of "software" does > it equate to "programs"; and even then, it's notoriously difficult to > define when a collection of bits is a "program" but is not a "text > document". > > On the contrary, "software" is more sensibly contrasted with > "hardware", and covers any information in digital form ___ whether > that information happens to be interpreted as a program, an audio > stream, a text document, some other kind of digital data, or several > kinds at once. 100 % agreement here, I even wrote an essay on this subject. http://frx.netsons.org/essays/softfrdm/whatissoftware.html > > > Is it considered acceptable (for the purpose of DFSG compliance) to > > formulate a legal notice that is nearly identical to the MIT license > > but that talks about specifications instead of software? > > It should be even simpler to accept the fact that, as digitally > encoded information, a specification document *is* software and thus > can be covered by the MIT license terms with no modification. That would be the simplest and best solution. Especially if we take into account that license proliferation is bad and should be avoided whenever possible (hint: it is almost always possible!). Moreover, it should be considered that a license that talks about a "specification" becomes pretty confusing and problematic, as soon as the work it applies to is modified into something that is no longer a "specification" (e.g.: a manual, a poem, ...). I would encourage the adoption of the unmodified Expat/MIT license: http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt -- http://frx.netsons.org/doc/nanodocs/testing_workstation_install.html Need to read a Debian testing installation walk-through? ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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