On Sat, 17 Jan 2015 01:58:09 +0000 Simon McVittie wrote: [...] > it is entirely possible to have a > standard that does not change or is under strict change-control, without > having copyright infringement as a stick to hit people with. A work > derived from a standard is not, itself, the standard (unless/until the > relevant standards body says it is), but it is potentially still a > useful thing for a third party to be able to construct without breaking > the law.
I agree with you, I was actually going to reply with some very similar consideration... [...] > Surely the harmful thing is not deriving new works from the standard, > the harmful thing is misrepresenting those derived works by claiming > that they are the standard when they are actually not? Exactly, and if the standards body feels like it, it may also cryptographically sign the official version(s) of the standard document, in order to give people a means to verify whether they are reading the unaltered version or some unofficial derivative work instead. I am convinced that this is the right tool to distinguish between official and modified versions of a standard specification. Using copyright in order to prevent other people from distributing modified versions is unnecessary and harmful! > > XMPP's XEPs (approximately equivalent to RFCs) are all > permissively-licensed > <http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0001.html#appendix-legal> and might be > an interesting model. Very interesting indeed, thanks for pointing them out! Bye. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/ fsck is a four letter word... ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
pgpndpL8vkkVe.pgp
Description: PGP signature
