[uf-discuss] Re: Voluntary Public Domain declarations now enabled on the wiki

[Andy Mabbett]

In message <C2C6A18B.924CA%tantek at cs.stanford.edu>, Tantek Çelik 
<tantek at cs.stanford.edu> writes

>On 7/20/07 4:35 PM, "Andy Mabbett" <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> I applaud him for doing so; but, at the time of writing, copyright in
>> both hCalendar and hCard is still claimed, in part, by "Technorati,
>> Inc.", by virtue of their being one of the three listed authors,
>
>Technorati is not listed as an author, but merely my (and a few 
>others') affiliation at the time of authoring the spec(s).
>
>However, I can very much see how that could be misinterpreted so I have 
>edited the affiliation text of the specifications of which I am an 
>author/editor/contributor to be in the style used by W3C specifications

Thank you for the clarification. I'm unclear as to why such an 
affiliation is relevant, if you were not acting on behalf of Technorati 
at the time of writing the spec (your connection to them is, after all, 
mentioned on your user page, should anyone be interested), but that's 
now incidental.

The hCalendar and hCard specs now each have two authors (you and Brain 
Suda), both of whom have kindly released your work into PD - so the 
statement that "Microformats copyright ... statements apply." and "This 
specification is (C) 2004-2007 by the author" are now either 
contradictory, or simply wrong. Please will you amend the spec to clear 
up that ambiguity, as you have done on Geo and Adr?

I take it that you're also aware that making such a spec PD means that 
there's no recourse, other than community disapprobation, if someone 
should republish it, with extra, removed, or changed properties?

>all the work I have done on microformats when employed by Technorati 
>was done very much in and for the community and I have taken the extra 
>step of releasing my work into the public domain to be even more 
>explicit.

Doing so is laudable and I look forward to seeing
the authors of other published microformats doing likewise.

-- 
Andy Mabbett