--- Peter Seibel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So here's some info that I got from Steve Haflich of Franz > and onetime chair of XJ13, the committee that brought us the > ANSI Standard. (This is from a conversation we had standing > in the lobby of the Franz office building; I wasn't taking > notes. Caveat Lector.) [snip] > - All these organizations agreed that they would place the > work (to which they held copyright since they were paying > Symbolics to do it as a work for hire) into the public domain. > Except some lawyer pointed out that you can't really > affirmatively put something in the public domain. So they did > something--not clear what--to assert their copyright but to > allow anyone to use the draft they were paying to have > produced for any purpose whatsoever. Right - that's essentially what I have heard. It's a pity the process was not better documented. > - That draft is the so-called dpANS2. > > - ANSI took the dpANS2 and made a few minor copy edits, > slapped on their logo and some front matter, and > published it as the ANSI standard. I thought that was dpANS3? It was never a formal draft, granted... I suppose the differences aren't too major. > - Kent Pitman, then at Harlequin then used the dpANS2 > as the basis for the HyperSpec. Franz similarly used > it to make their HTML version. Pitman also fought with > ANSI to get permission to do something (not clear > exactly what) beyond what he would have been allowed > to do with dpANS2. That's the part that makes me wary. To the best of my knowledge, all that has come from that part is the Hyperspec itself - why should that have been so difficult if in fact dpANS2 was without restriction? > - I'm pretty sure Harlequin (or Xanalys or Lispworks) owns > the copyright to the HyperSpec. They seem to assert that. > - The issue of copyright on dpANS2 is muddied by the fact > that it includes big chunks of text that were written by Guy > Steele for CLTL. He, according to Haflich, donated that text > to ANSI to use in the standard but it's not clear that the > folks (i.e. those companies) that produced the dpANS actually > had the right to use it. Obviously, from a practical point of > view, he and Digital Press, publishers of CLTL2, haven't been > bothered by the fact that their text is in the HyperSpec and > the dpANS, etc. but technically they could probably > make a stink. (Though maybe Pitman actually cleared that with > them-- he seems to make a point of being pretty scrupulous > about intellectual property issues.) And that's what I would favor doing as well - much of what I have been hearing about this process makes it sound like the fewer legal issues left unresolved, the better. > - The issue of copyright on dpANS2 is also muddied by the > many small contributions of text by other people who > participated in the standardization process. Hopefully the contributions and editing history in the dpANS3R directory could serve as a reasonable list. > So, to answer Don's question, probably not. If one wanted to > take the text of dpANS2 and use it for the basis of a derived > work (say an annotated version), and you wanted to be > incredibly scrupulous about making sure you weren't stepping > on anyone's copyrights, you'd probably need to track down the > contracts wherein the companies that funded the > dpANS2 "licensed" it for use by anyone for any purpose. Wouldn't it be simpler to simply contact the companies as ask them to just formally state that any material they have contributed to the dpANS documents is under Modified BSD license or some such? Why dig up the old contracts unless it is necessary to convince someone that the original intent was a freely usable text? > Then you'd probably want to talk to Guy Steele and/or Digital > Press. Surely that should be doable. > And for good measure the known authors of any of the sections > of the dpANS2 that were written by someone else (e.g. Dick > Waters, I believe, wrote large chunks of the section on the > pretty printer since he invented it.) Then, if you really > wanted to nail things down, you'd probably need to contact the > 100 or so folks who participated in the standardization and > who may have contributed text. 100% coverage might be tricky, but I would think this might be doable - after all the work has been available for a decade and ensuring that lawyers are unable to make trouble is ALWAYS a good thing. That's why Debian tries so hard to make sure they have a completely free distro - for example, I am aware of no other distribution that considered the licensing of the lists of words used for spell checking programs. > But probably the right and most efficient thing to do is to > find a good IP lawyer and tell them what, specifically you > want to do, and ask them to help you figure out what you need > to do to make sure you're not exposing yourself to excessive > liability by doing it. That's an expensive proposition. I suppose the FSF might be a logical candidate to take such a project on, but I made one attempt at contact through the only avenue I could find (a rather indirect one at best) and heard nothing. Plus, it's not a question of excessive liability so much - what free software needs is as close a chance to zero as humanly possible that no legal action of any kind can be taken. Lawsuits are a drain on resources whether they are valid or not. If no one else is interested, I guess I will have to see about contacting the various parties involved and finding out where things stand. But if it can be managed I would very much like to remove all chance of any legal doubt about the status of the draft specs. Cheers, CY __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! 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