licensing

[dpk]

How should this spec be licensed?

I would be in favour of placing it into the public domain, or alternatively under some very permissive Creative Commons license.

[feep]

The author of SQLite says that Public Domain scares corporate lawyers.

http://twit.tv/floss26

He says (paraphrasing, didn’t relisten):

1. Public Domain doesn’t release all rights in some countries, US included.
2. Lessig agrees (...may be why he got involved with (started?) CC?).
3. Lawyers are more comfortable with explicit.
4. Public domain scared the bigcorps so much that he had to create an alternative licence (that he sells, good for him).

No comment, otherwise, I don't know the CC licenses.

A vote for permissive, and IANAL, but it seems they vote explicit.

rusty

[dpk]

That's not such an issue here: we're licensing a document, not a piece of software. The rights on the specification of the API don't affect the rights on the API itself, which are not protected by copyright.