LID Licensing

From LID Wiki

{This text started with an eMail by Dan Lyke mailto:lid-dev@netmesh.us .}

Some sort of licensing terms for the use of LID(tm) are not necessarily a bad thing. A license might:

• Keep certain large parties from "embrace and extend"ing the protocol
• Force some sort of open-ness and community give-back from large users

(Fen Labalme suggests: Why not the AGPL? It will help to ensure compatibility and widespread acceptance.)

There are three ways that the use of LID could be restricted:

• Copyright of existing implementations
• Patent of the signing process
• Trademark of the orange hexagon logo

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If anyone knows of a license which covers these two issues, or can help contribute words, please speak up. Edit the text above, add to it, add links to pages on specific issues, ...

Let's use the space above the preceeding line for specifics.

For general discussions, let's use the space below the following line.

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One of the virtues of LID(tm) is that anyone can easily re-create the LID(tm) code. So copyright is out.

Johannes said that he has applied for a patent on the signing process; use of a patent is a possibility.

Obviously if we want to make this a widely accepted standard, we as implementors of the system will probably end up contributing to the value of the trademark.

Contributors could also choose to try to fork. Some think this is a bad idea, but do have a little concern:

It may be that the originators are good folks. They believe that it will be best for LID(tm) if they are a little more controlling in the process than others may think would be best. Still, some would rather take advantage of the existing momentum, rather than fork.

But if someonw tries to start a business which uses LID(tm), until we get explicit terms then that's a big unknown on the liabilities page. (Note: please contact Johannes Ernst if you contemplate doing that, we can figure it out)

So, here's one approach: A statement of intent that could be used as a protection against anyone else who might end up in posession of the intellectual property (say, for instance, if the persons or organizations that own the patent or trademark go bankrupt or sell and move to some paradise) that says that we're all clear to use both the LID trademark and any assigned patents if we interoperate with some soon-to-be-determined test suite, and if we make some reasonable portion of our LID code open source.

(Dan Lyke wrote: I'd love it both if that were "free to use no matter what", but I also understand that it's nice to have a lever to keep people in line, and it'd be nice to have a small revenue stream to do conformance tests, and, on the counter side, if it demanded that all of our source code be open source, but I'm also acutely aware of the lack of business model and potential. There are no perfect solutions.)

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Other legal issues at LID Legal