[uf-new] Legal implications of using Microformats (was: XFN - Professionals Network microformat)

[Brian Suda]

On 4/27/07, Manu Sporny <msporny at digitalbazaar.com> wrote:
> Would the mandatory placement of all examples, formats, brainstorming,
> proposals, and drafts under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
> 3.0 License go towards solving that problem?

--- i think the fact that people are publishing their work online and
we are citing it as examples is a perfect example of fair-use. I don't
see why people would also need to license their content. What is
important to keep open is the final microformat not all the example
data inbetween. You can certainly have open programs built from
proprietary data.

> That coupled with a patent statement on the Microformat stating that
> full disclosure has been performed by all authors and contributors to a
> Microformat. Authors are not allowed to contribute to Microformats if
> their organization holds any sort of patent covering their proposals.

when we began with hCard and hCalendar we added the following
copyright statement:
http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard#Copyright

This specification is (C) 2004-2007 by the authors. However, the
authors intend to submit this specification to a standards body with a
liberal copyright/licensing policy such as the GMPG, IETF, and/or W3C.
Anyone wishing to contribute should read their copyright principles,
policies and licenses (e.g. the GMPG Principles) and agree to them,
including licensing of all contributions under all required licenses
(e.g. CC-by 1.0 and later), before contributing.

I think that pretty clearly explains what you are agreeing to when you
participating.

If you have questions/comments we could certainly look into spinning
off a new page on the wiki to explain this better.

-brian

-- 
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk