---
title: brief "CC-licensed specification" rant
date: '2008-03-27'
tags:
- law
- licensing
- software
draft: false
legacy_url: https://lu.is/2008/03/brief-cc-licensed-specification-rant/
legacy_source: wordpress
---

The next time I hear "we've licensed the specification under Creative Commons so anyone can implement the spec", I'm going to scream at someone. ((Yes, someone from MS did it today, but I don't blame them- this is all confusing and they were trying hard to do the right thing.))

To take a list from a Microsoft license I read yesterday, implementing a spec may require (among other things) licensing of "pending utility and design patent claims, copyrights, trade dress and trademark rights." Putting a specification under a CC license gives you a *copyright* license to *the text of the specification*; it does not give license to the necessary trademarks, or to the patents, and depending on the license chosen, may not even give you the right to make a derivative work of the license (aka, the implementation.)

So, creative commons folks: could you please, please scream for me? Or better yet, work with SFLC to create a good license for specifications ([since they aren't happy with the OSP](http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/osp-gpl.html)), and then ask people who've 'cc licensed' specifications to use that instead? KTHXBYE. :)

*Clarification later:*

I said, poorly: "Putting a specification under a CC license... depending on the license chosen, may not even give you the right to make a derivative work of the license (aka, the implementation.)" This was confusing, because I deliberately cut out (in order to be brief) any discussion of what a derivative of the CC-licensed work would be.

What I should have said was something like: 
"CC licenses, used this way, definitely give you a right to edit and redistribute and change *the text of the specification*. However, probably 99 out of 100 lawyers would tell you that a CC license on the spec does not actually say anything at all about whether or not you can *implement* the specification. The remaining 1 out of 100 lawyers would say that the license gives you permission because the implementation is a derivative of the specification. *If* that is the case, and the implementation is a derivative, then the CC license gave you the permissions to implement- but they come with the standard CC restrictions as well! So either way the licensor probably doesn't get what they really wanted."