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

[Bruce Perens]

On Tue, Jul 16, 2024 at 8:37 AM Giacomo Catenazzi <cate at 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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