RE: [office-comment] Schema copyright

["Alex Brown" <alexb@griffinbrown.co.uk>]

Bob hi 
 
> A schema is a slightly different animal to the text standard. 
>  It is expected to be distributed widely together with 
> program code so I agree that it needs an explicit granting of 
> rights.  Particulalrly if the default licence of the ISO26300 
> version will be the ITTF terms.

Right. The specific problem that instigated all this was a lawyer for
Linux distro questioning whether ISO schemas could be included in a
FOSS-friendly way. Currently the answer is mostly, not!
 
> I am not entirely sure if BSD like terms are absolutely 
> appropriate but perhaps it is the best approximation for what 
> we want.  The problem with a standard schema is that, unlike 
> free software source code, you don't really want it to be 
> freely modified.  To take an extreme example, I should not be 
> able to replace the entire content of the schema with 
> something different and still distribute it as the odf schema.

Exactly - there needs to be some prevention of people "passing off"
customised schemas with the imprimatur of a SDO.
 
> Perhaps what is required is something like the restrictions 
> of the historic apache 1.0 licence 
> (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-1.0) whereby I should 
> be absolutely free to distribute the schema unmodified, but 
> if I make modifications I must remove all references to ODF, 
> OASIS, SUN, ISO, ITTF or what have you.
> 
> But as Rob says this is an issue which the TC doesn't have 
> jurisdiction over.  But perhaps if we flag the issue we might 
> see that it gets attention.  I certainly don't want to end up 
> downloading the schema under ITTF draconian terms.

Ideally I think there should be an OSI-approved license targetted at
this particular case. I have been in touch with OSI but our exchanges
have rather petered-out. Any volunteers to help press the case would be
very welcome.

Perhaps one way to move forward would be to raise a defect report
against IS 26300 complaining about the schema licensing? This could be
tabled for the upcoming WG6 Paris meeting. Then the formal process would
have to grind through to some solution - it's going to take lawyers,
rather than us techies, to sort it out so I suspect the impetus of a
formal process is needed to get action.

- Alex.