[open-web-discuss] new specification that uses OWFa: Facebook's "The Open Graph Protocol". new wiki page to track users of OWFa

[Tantek Çelik]

Facebook's "The Open Graph Protocol" is the most recent user/adopter
of the OWFa:

http://opengraphprotocol.org/


I've also created a stub page on the wiki to keep track of
users/adopters of the OWFa (including The Open Graph Protocol and
others)

http://wiki.openwebfoundation.org/Users_of_the_agreement

Please add links to more specifications and organizations who are
using the OWFa. I added a few I found.

Thanks,

Tantek

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[David Recordon]

Thanks for posting this! One thing I wanted to discuss was coming up
with the right way to apply the license in the style of applying a
Creative Commons license to a page. For now we've placed, "The
specification described on this page is available under the Open Web
Foundation Agreement, Version 0.9. Last updated April 20th, 2010." in
the footer but would be interested in a more concrete recommendation
from the legal committee.

Thanks,
--David

[David Rudin]

Take a look at http://wiki.openwebfoundation.org/How_to_use_the_agreement, which has some guidance on how to use the agreement and what to put in the spec itself.

 

As for the reference, you might want to think about posting a link to the signed agreement.  That way you don't need to worry as much about dating the version in the reference since the signed agreement should speak for itself.  A pointer to the OWF site is still probably helpful since it will provide additional background to those who are interested.

 

David

[David Recordon]

I guess I'm more seeing this as a slightly different use case.
Generally the approach of having everyone sign a document and sharing
them has been used when there are a lot of authors and the spec is
more complete. In this case there isn't a separate spec from the
single page website and we don't want to sign an agreement with each
change that is made. The spec also doesn't have a version number yet
separate from the last updated date.

This is similar to a site like http://www.tornadoweb.org/ which says
it is CC licensed in the footer.

Thanks,
--David

[Kevin Marks]

rel-licence would seem to be one way to do this:

http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-license

[Chris Messina]

I hadn't seen this thread before I just posted to the OGP list asking for a signed copy of their agreement, but I would agree that a signature-less agreement doesn't hold much weight or significance in my book.

Most of all because David said that Facebook worked with other companies to develop the spec, and yet failed to produce any kind of document with any signatures.

If this is just Facebook just the OWF agreement as their version of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise, then fine. But I'd like it to be treated as such, and not involve the OWFa, but instead the OWF contributor's license. It's hard me to understand how the OWFa applies when there's only one party signing it. What does that even mean?

Chris

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 1:43 PM, David Recordon <reco...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[David Recordon]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Chris Messina <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:

I hadn't seen this thread before I just posted to the OGP list asking for a signed copy of their agreement, but I would agree that a signature-less agreement doesn't hold much weight or significance in my book.

Really? There are plenty of examples of signature-less agreements all over the web:

 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Messina_(open_source_advocate) (Creative Commons)

 - http://code.google.com/policies.html (custom)

 - http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx (custom)

 - http://wordpress.org/about/gpl/ (GPL)

 - http://www.sun.com/software/standards/persistent/openid/nac.xml (custom)

Most of all because David said that Facebook worked with other companies to develop the spec, and yet failed to produce any kind of document with any signatures.

In this case we're saying that Facebook has licensed the protocol under the OWF Agreement terms. I imagine that you're far more interested in Facebook's terms rather than someone like Posterous.

If this is just Facebook just the OWF agreement as their version of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise, then fine. But I'd like it to be treated as such, and not involve the OWFa, but instead the OWF contributor's license. It's hard me to understand how the OWFa applies when there's only one party signing it. What does that even mean?

I'm really confused. The OWFa is designed for anyone to apply to any specification they create. Why do you seem to insist (here and on the OGP list) that we're being disingenuous? It's especially frustrating given that I specifically called out in this thread how we're applying the agreement in a slightly different manner than originally envisioned and asked the legal committee to help understand this use case.

--David

[David Rudin]

The OWFa was intended to be used across a variety of situations, ranging from solely developed and released specifications to community developed specifications.  

I think the comparison to how Microsoft's Open Specification Promise is used is right on.  Microsoft uses that promise on a range of specifications, including internally developed specifications as well as specifications developed by formal standards bodies.  The point is less about the development model used to create the specification and more about making IP rights available for a given specification.  By Facebook placing the OGP under the OWFa, it is making its copyrights and patents available to implementers and it's something that should be applauded.  There are far too many specifications released without clear licensing terms. 

If other companies or individuals contributed to OGP, I'd also like to see them sign the OWFa for the spec. If they haven't signed, Facebook should be transparent as to who else contributed to the specification.  Potential implementers can then make their own determination about potential risks.

As far as the actual signature goes, one of the main reasons we set the agreement up to use a signature was to provide clarity, security, and comfort for the community.  Since many of these specs are being developed and wikis and groups, we didn't want someone to list companies or individuals who are making rights available if that's not the case.  Requiring a signed copy was primarily meant to provide proof that a company has indeed signed up to the OWFa for a given specification.  

While we've designed the OWFa to be signed, I'm personally comfortable with Facebook declaring that OGP is available under the OWFa since that information is included on official Facebook properties and materials.  I think Facebook would have a very difficult time arguing that they weren't bound to the agreement given how it has presented its use of the OWFa.

David

 

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Chris Messina <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:

[DeWitt Clinton]

[+open-web-legal]

Even single-party use of the OWFa is desirable and should be encouraged -- it means that the single party (typically the primary author) is granting others certain rights to use, even modify, the spec.  This is valuable no matter what.   I'm thrilled that Facebook did this, and we should encourage others to do so as well.

A note for the legal committee -- we should think of ways to lightweight "sign" specs by including the OWFa footer on documents of obvious provenance, such as a facebook-authored spec served from facebook.com.

And now that the spec is out in the open, if further work is intended on it with wider collaboration and more contributors, then that process is something the CLA can be useful for.  But even if not, the single-party OWFa is still good for what we have.

-DeWitt

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Chris Messina <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:

[David Recordon]

Thanks David!

As for:

If other companies or individuals contributed to OGP, I'd also like to see them sign the OWFa for the spec. If they haven't signed, Facebook should be transparent as to who else contributed to the specification.  Potential implementers can then make their own determination about potential risks.

The Open Graph protocol was primarily developed by Facebook engineers and builds on the W3C's RDFa syntax specification, the Dublin Core schema, link-rel canonical, and the Microformat hCard as we documented at the bottom of http://opengraphprotocol.org/. While others implemented various versions of the syntax and schema, I don't believe that their feedback needs to be covered by OWFa.

Obviously as the community expands we'll need to figure out how to apply OWFa for future versions. This is one of the reasons why the CLA is needed!

--David