On Feb 16, 2010, at 9:41 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
> I do not see a requirement that anyone can take the specification and
> redistribute modified versions as useful. That is what has led to some of the
> proliferation of incompatibilities that we already have
I've stated elsewhere my hypothesis that copyright protection of the
specification has zero effect on the "proliferation of incompatibilities".
- The PDB format does not state that people can modify it, but there are a
myriad of variations in that well-defined spec. In part because it's not
appropriate for general use, in part because few actually read the spec, and in
part because people are strange. (I know someone who added a space column to
the ATOM records of the PDB format to make his data files parsable by
whitespace fields, rather than by column.)
- The MDL format, which does not allow modification, has many variations. Egon
on one of the B-O.stackexchange pages wrote:
don't get me started on the number of tweaks in the CDK MDL molfile
reader for 'extensions'
- The SMILES format has various extensions, including one from Openeye for '$'
for quadruple bonds and one from OpenBabel for radicals. Yet nothing in that
spec allows modification.
Similarly, nothing about the CML copyright prevents me from reverse engineering
the spec based on viewing enough CML files and making files which I claim are
CML files.
Instead, my hypothesis is that format fracturing should be handled under
trademark protection. I give as an example that DRM'ed "CD"s which violate
Phillip's Blue Book definition of the CD spec are not allowed to call
themselves CDs and are not allowed to use the CD logo on disc.
Andrew
[email protected]
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