[xslt-conformance] RE: IPR policy question

["Karl F. Best" <karl.best@oasis-open.org>]

Lofton:

I don't agree.

In the first place, the OASIS IPR policy states in IPR.4(A) that "OASIS
specifications shall include the following notice:" and in IPR.4(C) that
"The following copyright notice and disclaimer shall be included in all
OASIS specification-related documentation:" In other words, the
statements must be included, not simply referred to.

My second objection is that hyperlinks only work in electronic form.
They don't work on paper, so once a person prints out the specification
on paper the effective copyright language is lost. And even
electronically it's not foolproof: note that I replied to your email
using plain text (rather than HTML), and the hyperlinks in the W3C
snippet are now lost. So as long as everyone refers to the web page, and
only the web page, for the spec the copyright statement is safe, but as
soon as it begins to be disseminated further it will be lost.

</karl>
=================================================================
Karl F. Best
OASIS - Director, Technical Operations
978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org  http://www.oasis-open.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Lofton Henderson [mailto:lofton@rockynet.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 5:40 PM
To: Karl F. Best
Subject: IPR policy question

Karl,

I have an action item for XSLT TC.  Could you please give me a reading
on this from OASIS Legal?

Here's the problem.  A literal interpretation of the OASIS IPR policy
has us thinking that we have to include a certain hefty chunk of text,
OASIS.IPR.4.(C), in every XSLT TC document.  In our pending public
release, amongst the many files is a 6-line XML file.  The result of the
policy is 32 lines of useless boiler plate legalese overwhelming the 6
lines of content.

There is consensus that it is silly (absurd!) to have full text of a
32-line IPR policy in a 6-line XML file.

Particularly since we think that it need not be so.  Compare to W3C
practice:

"Copyright ©1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 W3C® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights
Reserved. W3C liability, trademark, document use and software licensing
rules apply.",

which appears in every W3C standard (and that's *all* that appears in
almost every standard).  Each of the words Copyright, liability, ... is
a hyperlink to the appropriate document.  In a format where one can't
attach hyperlinks, e.g., in the XSLT TC's XML files, DTDs, etc, then an
expression such as the following should work (it has worked fine in
other venues of my experience):

"Copyright (C) The Organization for the Advancement of Structured
Information Standards [OASIS] (2001). All Rights Reserved.  Copyright,
liability, trademark, document use, and software licensing as defined in
http://www.oasis-open.org/who/intellectualproperty.shtml apply."  (The
URL could point more specifically at a named anchor at 4(C), if
desired.)

Simple question for Legal.  Can we use this abbreviated approach for
XSLT TC documents?

I understand that there is some interest in a broad review of OASIS IPR.
If possible, could we please avoid broader issues than this limited
question, as XSLT TC intends to publish soon.

Thanks,
-Lofton.