On Dec 16, 2005, at 11:33 AM, Don Geddis wrote: > C Y <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Fri, 16 Dec 2005: >> The ANSI draft specification dpANS2 and it's unofficial revision >> dpANS3 >> have essentially been the bible for free Lisp implementations since >> Common Lisp became an ANSI spec - they contain virtually all the >> material present in the actual ANSI spec and are freely available >> It is available from here: ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/cl/ >> The problem with these draft specs, and the primary reason more >> hasn't >> been done with them, is because their legal status is - um - murky. > >> We obviously can't go the route of the Hyperspec since ANSI has no >> incentive to release the official version publicly even if they >> could, >> but the draft will serve - dpANS3 is by all accounts I have heard >> very >> very close to the ANSI final in content. > > Isn't the hyperspec very close to the ANSI final draft also? And > isn't the > legal status of the hyperspec much more clear? Would it be > possible to start > with that as a base instead?
So here's some info that I got from Steve Haflich of Franz and onetime chair of XJ13, the committee that brought us the ANSI Standard. (This is from a conversation we had standing in the lobby of the Franz office building; I wasn't taking notes. Caveat Lector.) - At some point in the standardization process it became apparent that there was a bunch of editorial work to be done and no one to do it and no funding to pay someone to do it. - Various organizations involved in the standardization such as Franz, Symbolics, Harlequin, Apple, and others decided that they would each contract with Symbolics to pay for a Symbolic's employee, Kent Pitman, to produce a draft standard which he would then "give" to ANSI to do with whatever they wished. - All these organizations agreed that they would place the work (to which they held copyright since they were paying Symbolics to do it as a work for hire) into the public domain. Except some lawyer pointed out that you can't really affirmatively put something in the public domain. So they did something--not clear what--to assert their copyright but to allow anyone to use the draft they were paying to have produced for any purpose whatsoever. - That draft is the so-called dpANS2. - ANSI took the dpANS2 and made a few minor copy edits, slapped on their logo and some front matter, and published it as the ANSI standard. - Kent Pitman, then at Harlequin then used the dpANS2 as the basis for the HyperSpec. Franz similarly used it to make their HTML version. Pitman also fought with ANSI to get permission to do something (not clear exactly what) beyond what he would have been allowed to do with dpANS2. - I'm pretty sure Harlequin (or Xanalys or Lispworks) owns the copyright to the HyperSpec. - The issue of copyright on dpANS2 is muddied by the fact that it includes big chunks of text that were written by Guy Steele for CLTL. He, according to Haflich, donated that text to ANSI to use in the standard but it's not clear that the folks (i.e. those companies) that produced the dpANS actually had the right to use it. Obviously, from a practical point of view, he and Digital Press, publishers of CLTL2, haven't been bothered by the fact that their text is in the HyperSpec and the dpANS, etc. but technically they could probably make a stink. (Though maybe Pitman actually cleared that with them-- he seems to make a point of being pretty scrupulous about intellectual property issues.) - The issue of copyright on dpANS2 is also muddied by the many small contributions of text by other people who participated in the standardization process. So, to answer Don's question, probably not. If one wanted to take the text of dpANS2 and use it for the basis of a derived work (say an annotated version), and you wanted to be incredibly scrupulous about making sure you weren't stepping on anyone's copyrights, you'd probably need to track down the contracts wherein the companies that funded the dpANS2 "licensed" it for use by anyone for any purpose. Then you'd probably want to talk to Guy Steele and/or Digital Press. And for good measure the known authors of any of the sections of the dpANS2 that were written by someone else (e.g. Dick Waters, I believe, wrote large chunks of the section on the pretty printer since he invented it.) Then, if you really wanted to nail things down, you'd probably need to contact the 100 or so folks who participated in the standardization and who may have contributed text. But probably the right and most efficient thing to do is to find a good IP lawyer and tell them what, specifically you want to do, and ask them to help you figure out what you need to do to make sure you're not exposing yourself to excessive liability by doing it. -Peter -- Peter Seibel * [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gigamonkeys Consulting * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/ Practical Common Lisp * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ _______________________________________________ Gardeners mailing list Gardeners@lispniks.com http://www.lispniks.com/mailman/listinfo/gardeners
