Re: [office-comment] Schema copyright

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

Murata-san.  I'm confused.  N1222 is "Text for ISO/IEC FDIS 19757-7, 
Information technology - Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL) - 
Part 7: Character Repertoire Description Language (CRDL)".  That has 
nothing to do with the ODF schema.   Perhaps you are referring to another 
document?

In any case, the copyright statement merely indicates which entities claim 
the exclusive rights associated with a copyright.  Remember, under the 
Berne Convention, a copyright is associated with every act of authorship, 
whether or not a copyright notice is explicitly affixed.  So every person 
who has contributed material to ODF (or any other standard for that 
matter), whether a TC member, or a member of a public, can claim some 
copyright to their contributed portions of its contents.

However, merely knowing the identity of the copyright holders tells you 
absolutely nothing about what rights users of the schema have.  Nothing. 
To see what rights users have, you need to look at the rights that TC 
members have granted OASIS via the OASIS IPR Policy (section 5.2, for 
example), what rights members of the public grant to OASIS via the 
Feedback Licence for comments on the public comment list, and then what 
rights OASIS grants users of their standards via their Notice, as well as 
what rights OASIS granted to ISO/IEC JTC1 via the Explanatory Report that 
accompanied the PAS submission of ODF to JTC1.

Personally, I think OASIS is scrupulous about ensuring that nothing gets 
into an OASIS Standard unless it comes in via the IPR Policy, and via 
these efforts the pedigree and IP integrity of the standard is maintained, 
both from copyright and patent perspective.  The result is a far more 
liberal and permissive set of rights for users of OASIS Standards than any 
standard that is created in JTC1.  However, if after reading through the 
above, you still have questions regarding copyright of OASIS standards, 
I'd suggest that you contact OASIS directly, since the individual OASIS 
TCs have no discretion over the copyright.

Regards,

-Rob

"MURATA Makoto (FAMILY Given)" <eb2m-mrt@asahi-net.or.jp> wrote on 
10/07/2009 07:57:37 PM:
> 
> The ODF schemas in 26300 contains two lines
> 
>    c 2002-2005 OASIS Open
>    c 1999-2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
> 
> I believe that this blocks the distribution of the ODF 
> schemas as part of open-source programs.  Getting rid of 
> these two lines is not enough, since 26300 as a publicly 
> available specification accompanies another copyright 
> statement, which governs the schemas as well.  If you have 
> an access to the SC34 document repository, see the schemas 
> in SC34/N1222 for what Alex Brown provided and WG1 has agreed on.
>