Re: [ode] Comments on the OSR


Brian M. Hunt (bmh@canada.com)
Thu, 27 Jan 2000 18:51:57 -0400 (AST)


> > Richard Stallman wrote:
> > >
> > > I asked our lawyer what he thinks about whether making our licenses
> > > some kind of official standard would make it reliable to refer to them.
> > >
> > > One difficulty is that the standards body might decide to make their own
> > > changes in the license before adopting it. They are of course free
> > > to write their own license, but we would probably stick to our version
> > > for GNU software.
> > I don't think they could modify it (except for maybe a removable header
> > identifying it as a standard, or such). For it to really be usable as
> > as standard and for compatibility, it would have to be adopted, as is,
> > in its entirity. The "standard" version should be identical in all
> > respects to yours (with the possible exception of some header text
> > that is not part of the actual license).
>
> I believe if you copywrite your license (or any document for that matter),
> others can not modify it without your permission. At least that is what
> I've been told in the past by lawyer types. YMMV.

That's partially correct, much like you make it sound. Although a
Standards Organization (SO) cannot change your work, they have the option
of citing your work as the standard OR creating an original work based on
your work. In the latter case, their standard may differ from your work,
copyrighted or no. (I suppose it would have to differ, it being plagarism
if they copied verbatum.)

In the end, the produced standard will be a result of which organization,
and the intentions of those in that organization dealing with this. Once
a standard, it is the duty of the organization to enforce it. Also, the
organization may also wish to have the rights to make additional
stipulations or provisions to the document. Indeed, we may be powerless
to stop that.

Without a contract, it is essentially in the hands of the standards body,
depending on the rights provided to the original author(s) of a standard.
Standards bodies have good and bad points. Without first contacting them,
we do submit ourselves to speculative points.

Regards,

Brian

--
ps. Richard: Did you recieve this email twice?



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