[JDEV] Question about licensing

[Daniel Arbuckle]

On Thu, 7 Oct 1999, Lazarus Long wrote:
> At the risk of a "what he said" response, I think this is a serious
> matter.  A *closed* protocol is anathema.  Is this project going to
> become slave to a proprietary item?  Licensing is serious business.
> 
> By using a non-GPL license, you are effectively eliminating the
> participation of developers who choose to develop OSS as a moral
> imperative.

Again: To the best of my knowledge, it is impossible to copyright a
protocol. We could patent it, but obviously we're not going to, and nobody
else can patent it. 
The protocol specification could be protected by copyright, and I would
like to see Jer do exactly that, placing the spec under an equivalent of
a free software license. As things stand now, Jer's employer could
concievably claim ownership of the specification documents, and we'd have
to rewrite them from memory.

IANAL

Daniel