[JDEV] Resolution of Licence issues..

[Daniel Arbuckle]

On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Oliver Jones wrote:
> 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.

The document is only a description. It's not the same thing as a protocol.
Even if the document were locked away forever, we could still use the
protocol. And if the protocol were somehow patented out from under us, the
document would do us no good.

> 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.)

Um, does it look like the protocol docs are not being openly published?

Daniel