Intellectual Property License

The following license applies to all contributions to the OSDI Specification

Informational Layperson’s Summary

Note: This summary is for informational purposes only. In event of any conflict between this informative summary and the Normative License Commitment, the Normative License Commitment shall supersede this informative summary.

The commitment establishes the following principles

  1. For any contribution incorporated into the OSDI specification, whether through participation, GitHub repository comment or pull request, or other any other means, a royalty free license for the purposes of OSDI implementation is granted.

  2. Should you own a patent on a contribution, you cannot propose it for inclusion in the OSDI Specification and then demand royalty payments when someone implements that contribution as part of an OSDI Specification implementation.

  3. If you own a patent upon which an implementation of the OSDI Specification depends, you are not granting any licenses for implementations outside of the OSDI specification.

Normative Licensing Commitment

Definitions

Contributor

A Member of OSDI or member of the public making a contribution to the OSDI Specification

Contribution

Written or oral input which is incorporated in the OSDI Specification though committee participation, GitHub repository comment or pull request, or other any other means.

Specification

Any technical document or whitepaper that OSDI develops and is approved by an OSDI Committee.

Licensing Commitment

Each Contributor agrees that it will offer to all applicants a royalty free, nonexclusive, worldwide, non-sub licensable, perpetual patent license to its Necessary Claims on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms to make, have made, use, import, offer to sell, sell, and distribute conformant implementations of any OSDI Specification.

Necessary Claims

“Necessary Claims” means claims of a patent or patent applications, other than design patents and design registrations, that are: (i) owned or controlled by a Contributor now or at any future time; and (ii) are infringed by implementation of the normative portions, including the normative elements of optional portions, of applicable Specification that is within Scope, where that infringement cannot be avoided by another technically reasonable non-infringing alternative for implementing that Specification. Necessary Claims do not include any claims: a. that read solely on an implementation example included in that Specification; b. other than those claims set forth above, even if contained in the same patent as Necessary Claims; c. that are infringed by any enabling technologies that may be necessary to make or use any product or portion thereof that complies with that Specification, but are not themselves expressly set forth in that Specification; d. that are infringed by the implementation of other technologies developed elsewhere but referred to in the body of that Specification; e. that are infringed by any portions of any product and any combinations thereof the purpose or function of which is not required for conformance with the applicable Specification; or f. that are infringed by any software code set out in that Specification for purposes of illustration, sample implementation, or reference.

Here’s a proposal based on the W3C copyright license. It allows republishing (like forking our repo for proposed changes), but prohibits publishing as a technical specification, or the representing the democratic consensus of OSDI

Copyright License

By using and/or copying this document, or the OSDI document from which this statement is linked, you (the licensee) agree that you have read, understood, and will comply with the following terms and conditions:

Permission to copy, and distribute the contents of this document, or the OSDI document from which this statement is linked, in any medium for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby granted, provided that you include the following on ALL copies of the document, or portions thereof, that you use:

  • A link or URL to the original OSDI document.
  • The pre-existing copyright notice (hypertext is preferred, but a textual representation is permitted) of the form: “Copyright © [$date-of-document] Open Supporter Data Interface (OSDI)

No right to create modifications or derivatives of OSDI documents is granted pursuant to this license, except as follows: To facilitate implementation of the technical specifications set forth in this document, anyone may prepare and distribute derivative works and portions of this document in software, in supporting materials accompanying software, and in documentation of software, PROVIDED that all such works include the notice below. HOWEVER, the publication of derivative works of this document for use as a technical specification, or as a representation of consensus of OSDI democratic decision-making process is expressly prohibited.

The notice is:

“Copyright © 2018 OSDI. This software or document includes material copied from or derived from [title and URI of the OSDI document].”