[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: SAX2: Which license?
Paul Prescod writes: > Let me pretend to be a lawyer, and then a consultant. > It is highly debatable that APIs and other software to software > interfaces are protectable. Yes, I should be clearer here -- I wouldn't try to copyright more than the specific *expression* of the API in Java, C++, etc., but it would still be possible for someone to create an entirely compatible one from scratch. Life on Linux would be very dull if we didn't have work-alikes for the Unix C library (glibc), OpenGL (Mesa), and other similarly important stuff, not to mention the Unix system call themselves. > The case law is muddled but the "common practice" is quite > clear. Would Microsoft allow Wine or Samba if they thought that the > Windows API or SMB protocols were protectable? They're thinking about it. Have you read the Microsoft Halloween documents? http://www.opensource.org/halloween/ > How about the re-implementations (against Sun's wishes) of the Java > API? To be fair, I think that Sun's license does explicitly allow that, even if the execs don't like it. > Note that Sun protects the Java API through *trademark law* not > copyright. The W3C protects XML in a similar fashion. [snip] > Consultant: > > What problem are you trying to solve? Wow! You sound just like a real consultant, except that the first question should have been "How much money do you have to spend?" > Whatever it is, licenses designed for code are not likely to reach > your goals with respect to an API. If you want to allow anyone to > use SAX anywhere in any way for any project then what's wrong with > putting it in public domain? Other licenses exist to stop some > particular action (e.g. commercial use). What are you trying to > prevent? > > I use implementations of SAX (parser, app and infrastructure library) > that do not in any way use code from your site. I don't see how your > license can affect that use at all. I'll take this as a (very well-reasoned) vote for leaving SAX2 in the Public Domain, just like SAX1. With SAX1, I made that decision rather autocratically (I just did it), but I'd like to hear a range of opinions before we commit to a license for SAX2. All the best, David -- David Megginson david@m... http://www.megginson.com/ xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; unsubscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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