Revisit licensing for content contrubuted directly to this repository

[alerque]

This issue of what license terms govern this repository was broached and discussed at length in issue #1. The issue was subsequently closed following commit 611bc2f, which clarified that participation anywhere in the process is automatically covered by ISO data policy:

Participation in the ISO activities is subject to ISO's copyright and data protection policy, which is detailed by the following Declaration for Participants in ISO Activities

This is quite clear (and as stated elsewhere I of course agree to these terms). However while this statement clarifies contributions and how they may be used relevant to ISO proceedings –clearly everything contributed to this repository will be covered by that policy– it does not clarify how submissions here are licensed relevant to other possible usage, and indeed leaves the whole repository in limbo.

I don't expect a lot of original content to accrue here, but this state of limbo is already blocking simple things like adding a glossary of terms relevant to this work (see #14). Sure this content could be used as part of a formal spec submission to the ISO, but otherwise the default state of affairs is that content remains copyrighted by the authors. Hence anything contributed here ends up on very dubious legal footing were other non ISO projects interested in re-using it. I think this runs contrary to what many/most of us are trying to accomplish here.

This concern was raised in #1, but discussion on that issue was also very sidetracked, hence the new issue. Comments there directly relevant to this issue cited here in entirety so discussion can continue here rather than being sidetracked into the other topics. First from @davelab6:

611bc2f closes this issue.

Then from myself:

I'm not sure it does. I'd like to see something a little bit more liberal. The ISO copyright and data protection policy surely must cover everything we submit so that it can be eligible for an eventual proposal. However it's not clear from my reading of the policy what happens to content that isn't included. Basically, the declaration states that contributors to the process release their submissions to be copyrighted by the ISO. I'm fine with that. But what about submissions that don't make it to that stage? Can we request that contributors to this repository dual-license their contributions and be bound by both the ISO policy and release the contributions under Apache or BSD or Creative Commons or something else?

Take the simple example of the glossary submission (#14). If that text ever gets copied into some draft and submitted as a standards proposal I'm totally okay with my contribution being bound by the ISO's declaration. But what if it doesn't? Am I free to use that glossary text on another project? Or only the bits I authored? Could we copy it into CommonType or some other documentation project without running afoul of the licensing? Since non-draft-submission content is not clearly covered by that declaration I think it would behoove those who contribute here in the spirit of open source to both agree to release their contributions for ISO use and also release them to some more generic open license so they could be used in other projects without creating ambiguity. This would cover contributions, code snippets in discussions that are not otherwise called out, etc.

This dual licensing could be especially useful in the future if an independent project such as CommonType were leveraged to submit new proposals that get made into new OFF drafts. If it were to be accepted and approved, the status of CommonType (or whatever similar work, it would be more directly in this repo) would change and potentially we could get asked to take it down, putting us right back where we started with a spec we can't edit collaboratively. If our submissions here were dual licensed this kind of catch-22 would be avoided.

Then from @fantasai:

Am I free to use that glossary text on another project?

You would, since you own the copyright. But nobody else would, unless you separately licensed it for such usage.

I'll further note that even if ISO accepts your submission, you still own the copyright to your submission under their policy, afaict. They claim copyright over the compiled draft/standard, not your submission: you are only licensing it to them for inclusion, not assigning them copyright.

I think, unless you want to restrict republication of the materials to ISO, you'll want to dual-license. And doing that up front here is going to be way easier than tracking down all contributors later.

And finally from @twardoch:

If submitting to ISO meant you lose copyright, MS would have lost copyright over OT, but it didn't :)

At this point the issue of licensing was left hanging, the discussion is on other topics.

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I propose that in addition to agreeing to be bound by ISO data retention policy (which is a non-negotiable), we voluntarily also agree on a secondary open-source license, the terms of which would be applied to content submissions to this repository. This would make potential contributors free-er to collaborate across projects. Otherwise this is going to be a silo that people on the open-source end of things can't do much more than observe.

The most likely candidates for this secondary license seem to be BSD, MIT, or Apache.

[alerque]

Crosslinking a message on the MPEG-OTSPEC mailing list from @tiroj that I think is related:

Q. If an implementation spec is developed in an open process, using appropriate collaborative tools and with a public and editable draft, and then submitted to ISO for standardisation, who then owns the content and can the draft in its current state continue to be public and provide the basis for subsequent development independent of the OFF text?

See at least the next two messages in that mailing list thread for follow up.