[uf-dev] Specification for Inline XBRL 0.54

[Manu Sporny]

Diane Mueller wrote:
> Your feedback is eagerly sought on this specification, as we are quite
> interested in aligning with the microformats & RDFa work where & when
> possible.

Just to point out something that wasn't stated in the e-mail that Diane
sent to the list. The XBRL draft is subject to XBRL International's IP
Policy, which states:

"""
4.1.     Ownership of XBRL Recommendations. Subject to the ownership of
the copyright in each Contribution by its respective Contributor in
accordance with section 4.2 below, XBRL International will own the
copyright in the Final Recommendation.
"""[1]

There are a couple of other paragraphs about patents in there that raise
a couple of red flags.

I'm not suggesting that this is their intention, but one possibility is
this:

The license to edit, copy, modify, or use XBRL is not royalty-free. One
of us could submit an idea to them and they could copyright the text or
submit a patent covering the idea. This could come back to bite the uF
community if the idea is useful because XBRL would have rights to that
idea and the text surrounding the idea.

I wouldn't give any feedback until Rohit can take a look at their IP
Policy and get back to us on a reasonable way to move forward, if there
is any.

Sorry Diane, the fact that you're creating a "standard" that is not
royalty-free to everybody shows that XBRL is currently not interested in
the type of open standards that this community creates.

You should have a chat with Rohit Khare - he handles all legal matters
regarding this community. He is cc'ed on this e-mail.

-- manu

[1]http://www.xbrl.org/Legal2/XBRL-IP-Policy-2007-02-20.pdf

-- 
Manu Sporny
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: RDFa Basics in 8 minutes (video)
http://blog.digitalbazaar.com/2008/01/07/rdfa-basics/