[JDEV] Question about licensing

[Daniel Arbuckle]

We can't add an addendum to out license because our code incorporates code
from other projects which does not have such an addendum. To release their
code under a license that violates the original license would be illegal.

A protocol is, I think, not copyrightable. I suppose it could be patented,
but the existance of our project proves that the hypothetical company did
not invent the jabber protocol, which means that nobody other than us
could patent it.

IANAL

Daniel

On Thu, 7 Oct 1999 Isotope2k at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 10/6/99 6:04:49 PM US Eastern Standard Time, 
> quad at jabber.org writes:
> 
> << The _protocol_ is not under GPL. >>
> 
> In light of this statement, I have a few questions.
> 
> What license is the protocol released under?
> Who is the legal issuer of said license?
> If the point of releasing the protocol under a non-GPL license
> is to ensure that proprietary clients can be developed without
> enforcing the GPL on them, why not just add an addendum to
> the GPL license that allows for this?
> 
> My primary concern here is that some corporate entity might
> eventually control the rights to the Jabber protocol and enforce
> restrictive or cost-oriented licenses.  In other words, "sure, you
> can see the source code, but we OWN the mechanic."
> 
> Regards,
> Christopher Atkins
> 
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