Re: Request for feedback: licensing a public specification

On Mon, 24 Jun 2024 15:34:35 +0100 Simon McVittie wrote:

[...]
> Perhaps consider using
> <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5215#section-11>, the legal terms
> of the RFC that describes Vorbis-over-RTP:
> 
>    The authors agree to grant third parties the irrevocable right to
>    copy, use, and distribute the work, with or without modification, in
>    any medium, without royalty, **provided that, unless separate
>    permission is granted, redistributed modified works do not contain
>    misleading author, version, name of work, or endorsement information.**
> 
> (my emphasis)
[...]

I fully agree with Simon's reasoning about the importance of the
permission to modify the specification (and, more generally, about the
importance for the specification document to be Free Software).

I would personally suggest the [zlib] license for such a document.
It explicitly requires that altered versions be plainly marked as such,
and not be misrepresented as being the original.

[zlib]: <https://www.zlib.net/zlib_license.html>



-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/
 There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory!
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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