[License-discuss] Question for licensing an open source library

[John Cowan]

John Wason scripsit:

> I'd like to change the terms for commercial products that utilize the
> protocol so that rather than protecting the code I am protecting the
> protocol specification.

As the Irishman said in the joke, if you want to go to Ballyragget, you
shouldn't start from here at all.  In this case it is not "shouldn't"
but "can't".

Copyright will not protect a protocol, only the specification, and
anyone can reverse engineer the specification from the existing code.
By publishing an open-source implementation, you have given up any hope
of protection by trade secret or by patent (which requires non-disclosure
of the patentable invention until after it is filed).  You can trademark
the name, but that won't prevent other implementations, forked or otherwise.

> The goals for this license are as follows:
> 
> 1. Prevent fragmentation and ensure maximum interoperability
> 2. Prevent forking (the Microsoft steal-and-tweak)
> 3. Encourage maximum adoption

Your best hope for those is to get the protocol approved by a standards
body since as IETF, ECMA, W3C, OASIS, or ISO.  You should realize that
that means giving up control of the protocol's development.  Failing that,
publish the protocol as widely as possible, and lobby important actors
to adopt it.  Even so, most standards, de jure or de facto, basically
fail to achieve widespread adoption.

> 4. Generate revenue for Wason Technology, LLC to fund continuing
> development

Your best hope for *that* is that you are the best expert on the protocol,
and if people want implementations they will be likely to come to you
first, if you don't scare them off.

> Any advice that opensource.org can provide in developing the licensing
> terms is greatly appreciated.

The best advice I have, at least, is that you are attempting reasonable
goals with unusable means.  You have to rethink.

-- 
Your worships will perhaps be thinking          John Cowan
that it is an easy thing to blow up a dog?      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
[Or] to write a book?
    --Don Quixote, Introduction                 cowan at ccil.org