On 1/14/07, David Powell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:> You can't just say that the license extension inherits and
expect every implementation out there to implement that. You'd need an Atom 2.0 to do that: either support for must-understand (which was rejected from Atom 1.0), or a special feed document extension container.
An implementation should only do things based on the license extension if it understands what the license extension means. Since the draft now has carefully written words to ensure that license extensions only grant additional rights and do not restrict default rights, the worst case situation is that an implementation that doesn't understand the license extension inheritance will simply treat entries as though they only had normal, copyright-defined rights associated with them. i.e. You would get fair use, implied right to syndicate, right to read, right to make facilitative copies, etc. but you wouldn't realize that you also get whatever extra rights were granted by the license. This is, I think a reasonable fall-back. Of course, implementations that do understand that feed-level licenses are inherited will be able to manage rights just a bit better. This is a good thing. A failure to properly implement license inheritance tends to limit what the *reader* believes they can do with entries, but it doesn't do any "harm" to the owner of the intellectual property in the entries since no one can believe that they have rights not granted. The worst that can happen is that readers don't know all the rights they have. This is acceptable, in my opinion. bob wyman
