Re: Licensing a file format (was Re: SVN Branch Description Format)

From: Andrew Sayers <andrew-git@pileofstuff.org>
Date: Mar 19, 2012, 20:31 UTC
Message-ID: <4F6797AD.2070501@pileofstuff.org>
In-Reply-To: <20120319013422.GC19680@burratino>

On 19/03/12 01:34, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

Show 22 quoted lines

> Hi Andrew,
> 
> Andrew Sayers wrote:
> 
>> I'm planning to release the spec under a Creative Commons
>> Attribution-NoDerivs license
> [...]
>> So the big question - would you be more inclined to use/contribute to
>> the SVN Branch Description Format if it had a different license?
> 
> Yes.  By the way, I think fear of forking/discussion of potential
> improvements/translation into other languages in the context of
> standards is misguided.  If you would like legal protection for your
> standard, that is what trademark law is for.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Jonathan
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Could you expand on this? A quick tour of the git codebase suggests your objection is just to the "no derivatives" bit for documentation, and not to the MIT license for code?

It sounds like you're saying that forking isn't a big real-world problem, which I guess makes sense - it'll all work out in the end as long as a single standard is in everybody's interests. So the CC-BY license is my favourite for now.

	- Andrew