Andre,

The intention is that the specification be available under both licenses (at the user's discretion). Being available under a Creative Commons license is basically a requirement for Cloud APIs nowdays (much to my satisfaction) and anything else - especially the OGF default (which is far more restrictive than even the DMTF license!) - will surely stifle adoption whether justified or not. If that doesn't work for the OGF then I'll just release it under CC myself and remove/rewrite others' contributions (assuming they don't agree to do the same, which would surprise me).

I think the important thing in terms of the *normative* specification is to rely on trademark rather than copyright law - at the end of the day it's more effective anyway and it doesn't prevent your APIs from being reused by others.

Sam

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 7:41 PM, Andre Merzky <andre@merzky.net> wrote:
Quoting [Sam Johnston] (Feb 18 2010):
>
> We maintain a Google Code repository at
> http://code.google.com/p/occi/ ...

Hi Sam, all,

the project states on the entry page, as it should :-), that all
material is under OGF IPR.
http://code.google.com/p/occi/source/browse/docs/occi-copyright.pdf
states pretty much the same, but additionally states that

 "The Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) by Open Grid Forum is
 dual-licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
 License"

While I am a big fan of dual- or multi-licensing for source code, I
would appreciate the motivation for dual-licensing the OCCI
specification: what is the problem you are trying to solve?

In particular, I do not understand how Creative Commons makes sense
for a *normative* specification, as the usual use case for CC is to
create derivative work - which almost by definition will break the
standard, and will lead to confusion what document remains normative
etc.

Also, there are two modi operandi for dual licensing, AFAICS: either
the end user is free to pick what license to apply to the document,
or the end user is required to adhere to the specifics of both
licenses.  I assume that you choose the first modus, but that is not
explicitely stated in the document - as statement to that respect
should be added.  The second modus wuld not make much sense IMHO, as
the OGF IPR seems, to me, more constrained than CC (no changes
allowed), and the additional CC license would thus have no effect
whatsoever?

I know that license discussions can be tedious and tend to be
emotional.  Also, we all are probably not lawyers :-)  Anyway, if
you or someone initiated could shed some light on how and why that
approach was chosen, I would appreciate the insight.

Best, Andre.

--
Nothing is ever easy.