[JDEV] Resolution of Licence issues..

[Oliver Jones]

At 07:14 AM 10/12/99 -0700, Daniel Arbuckle wrote:

>You _can't_ copyright a protocol.

You can, absolutely, positively, place a copyright notice on a written work
describing a protocol.  The whole point of copyrighting this written work
to include the permission grant is to help ensure that the protocol remains
forever open.

There's another point to publishing a protocol description openly.  If, at
a later time, someone attempts to patent some aspect of the protocol, then
the publication constitutes "prior art."   So, publication of this sort of
thing can forestall later patent claims.  (Unfortunately, this doesn't work
wrt to prior, stealthy, patent claims.)

At 09:44 AM 10/12/99 -0500, Thomas Charron wrote:
>  Problem.  The X Consortium is an official entity that is legally
recognized.  
>The 'Jabber Team' is not.

I agree, it's true at the moment that Jabber isn't a corporation.   Will it
be true forever?  (If Jabber meets its technical goals, it will need to be
incorporated.)  Anyway, I don't think it matters very much for the purpose
of this permission-grant thing.