On Tue, Jul 16, 2024 at 8:37 AM Giacomo Catenazzi <c...@debian.org> wrote:
> But a standard is much more then just API and structures. As we learned: > "nobody can build a network stack just reading RFC, without looking BSD > code", for this reason "reference implementation" is important (and part > of the original question), But please note that the elements of the reference implementation that *must be copied in order to interoperate *are not themselves copyrightable. Indeed, programmers seem to believe that their code is uniformly copyrightable. In fact you can copyright some pieces of your code. A lot less than most people think. > but also text and rationale. And this brings us back to the fact that the text of the standard can be copyrighted as the text of a standard, but the software implementation, unless it somehow reproduces large swathes of the rationale, would not be infringing of it. And of course said swathes could be stripped out. > We can look at Unicode Standard: the text is much more than just a > standard, it has a lot of linguistic and stylistic works. All of which has the most dubious of copyrightability, due to its purpose being entirely functional. So, I understand Nate's purpose. I don't believe the law will be of much help to him in it, though. And the issuance of a specialized license for the standard will mainly have the effect of fooling others into the belief that it can be enforced. Or worse - convincing courts that this is the new norm and that it *should *be enforced. This is the main reason that I objected to Open Hardware licenses. We had so much to lose if courts started to believe that they *should *be enforced. Imagine if every schematic in every electronics book had an enforceable copyright that governed the *implementation. *It would greatly hobble the field. Thanks Bruce
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