copyrights

["Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>]

I've got no philosphical differences with what Bob suggests, but I do
have a legal quibble:

As I understand the copyright law, we can't just "own the new document
until the copyright is assigned" unless we prevent members of the
community from getting copies of the new work.  If we distribute the
draft specification widely without some sort of copyright notice on it,
that puts the text in the public domain.  That is irreversible.  ANSI
could later add a preface of some sort and copyright THAT, but anyone
would have the right to distribute the text with whatever changes they
feel like putting in.

That might not be so bad.  Anyone wanting a definitive version with no
possibility of changes would have to come to ANSI or to us, depending on
who they trust.  So ANSI might end up selling as many copies this way as
any other.  And the rest of us could just forget about lawyers.  It
might create some confusion to have mutant versions floating around, but
we could get the word out that only copies that are certified by ANSI
are to be treated as definitive.  And it would minimize the amount of
lawyering needed.  If ANSI and DEC or Lucid were willing to go along,
this is the route I'd prefer.  It's hard to imagine DEC agreeing to
allow a derivitive work in the public domain; I'm not sure about Lucid.

If we don't want to go public-domain, either we keep the new manual out
of general circulation -- impossible -- or we have to put a copyright
notice on it.  I think that means an individual or corporation ahs to be
named as the legal entity owning the copyright.  So we have to either
form an organization or name one of us to "own" the manual until we turn
some of the rights over to ANSI.  And we have to get permission from DEC
or Lucid to use their text in the way we specify.  We can't start work
modifying their sources until we have that permission.

If I'm wrong about the legailities here, PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

-- Scott