[License-discuss] Request for feedback: public specification licensing

[Roland Turner]

On 16/7/24 12:38, Simon Phipps wrote:

> Hi!
>
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2024 at 5:09 PM Roland Turner via License-discuss 
> <license-discuss at lists.opensource.org> wrote:
>
>     It's not a revenue question. The important issue is that all
>     copies of
>     an interoperability standard must say the same thing, or
>     interoperability itself is defeated.
>
>
> Having watched the recent debacle at ISO over Schematron, PDF and 
> other specs, and observed the impassioned positions of the various 
> standards entities arguing within the ISO special committee on free 
> availability of specifications, I can assure you that it's very much a 
> revenue question for the /de jure/ standards organisations who are 
> still living in a prior millennium and funding their activities from 
> its norms.


You are confusing two separate issues:

 1. That a handful of [mostly older] technical standards bodies are
    insisting upon per-copy payments for [most] standards, as the basis
    of their business model, even when transferred electronically.
 2. That technical interoperability standards must distributed without
    their meaning being changed, in order for them to be a basis for
    interoperability.

#1 is obviously true, and I didn't claim otherwise. You are responding 
as though I claimed that #1 wasn't happening.


The need for interoperability standards to not have their meaning 
changed applies equally to standards organisations which:

  * have never charged for their standards (IETF as the obvious example)
  * no longer charge for most/all of their standards when transferred
    electronically (e.g. ITU)
  * still charge for most/all of their standards, even when transferred
    electronically (e.g. ISO and its national members)

None of the freedoms which OSI cares about are harmed by this fact by 
itself. Questions about whether licensees are free to distribute 
unmodified copies, or derived works (e.g. an updated or modified 
standard) under a plainly different name, and what additional terms 
might apply to such redistribution, would appear to be very much of 
interest to OSI, and is what appears to be under discussion here.


- Roland

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