[occi-wg] OCCI Editor Getting Started Guide (docs/README.txt)

[Andre Merzky]

Hi Pieter, 

its great to see some additional response, besides Sam :-)


Quoting [Pieter Hintjens] (Mar 25 2010):
> 
> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:07 AM, Sam Johnston <samj at samj.net>
> wrote:
> 
> > Mine too - if you can't reuse/remix the work then it's not free
> > enough.
> 
> The ability to remix a standard seems an essential freedom: if a
> standard becomes too complex or encumbered by patents then this is
> the only way to save parts of it. 

*sigh* my mail thread to that topic is counting well over 50 mails
by now, and I still did not understand why people think that to be
the case.  Would you or Sam please so kind and provide either an
explicit example for a spec which has successfully been forked, or
an explicit use case where that would be neccessary, and where the
same cannot be achieved by referencing or profiling the old (complex
or encumbered) standard?

What I (naively) think is that I can always create a specification
like

  "This specification defines an API API-B, which consists of the
  API defined in [orig], names API-A, with the call A removed, and
  the calls B added.  The call C changes its semantics to perform a
  nil operation.  Call D takes an additional parameter 'int size'
  which defaults to 1."

Voila, new API specified.  Same for interfaces, protocols, etc etc.
Why do you need to fork a spec?  I don't get it, sorry...

Yes, the new API is called differently.  This is a *good* thing - I
don't want to see two specs for API-A which define different syntax
and semantics!  Are there use cases where one wants to break
interoperability on purpose? *scratch*  I can't think of any.  At
least the version number of the spec needs to change, IMHO.


> That's why for Digistan we defined[1] the ability to fork a
> standard under a share-alike license as a necessary aspect.  We
> chose the GPLv3 mainly because it includes some safeguards against
> software patents, which CC does not.

I understand the concerns about patents.  But I think we agreed that
this is out of scope for this specific discussion.  I am not sure if
you are on the OCCI mailing list, so you may have not seen that part
of our exchange.

We basically agreed I think, and this is also what you say I guess,
that neither the OGF IPR nor CC-SA can provide any protection
against 3rd party patent claims on technology required to implement
a specification.  The best one can do is to obtain explicit patent
waivers from those parties known to have claims on the relevant
technology.  GPLv3 helps to some extent of course, but cannot
provide protection against 3rd party patent claims either.

Thanks, Andre.

> -Pieter
> 
> 
> [1] http://www.digistan.org/text:rationale#toc6



-- 
Nothing is ever easy.