almaember almaember at disroot.org
Tue Oct 26 00:34:35 BST 2021
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On October 26, 2021 12:59:33 AM GMT+02:00, Alex // nytpu <alex at nytpu.com> wrote:
On 2021-10-26 12:20AM, almaember wrote:
He merely owns the website/capsule it's hosted on. Taking and hosting
it, or even rewording it to avoid copyright issues, is a relatively
simple task.
If I take a copy of whitehouse.gov and replace all the text with "lol
the government's dumb" does that make it the official whitehouse.gov
site? Solderpunk hosts the canonical version (which you said yourself
is the one everyone follows) which means they're the one that "owns"
the Gemini specification.
Except whitehouse.gov is run by an elected government. This will apply when we start holding elections for Gemini.
GitLab doesn't own the GitLab specification just because it's hosted
there, and neither does the operator of this mailing list own this
message.
And yet I both host and own nytpu.com.
Yes hosting =/= ownership, however in most cases (on Gemini at least)
hosting *is* equivalent to ownership.
He hosts and owns the website, yes. Maybe even the spec. The protocol though? Hell, that's too abstract to be owned by anyone.
And, lastly this is not an open source project per se. More like a set
of conventions projects agree on. In other words, a standard.
I don't recall anyone anywhere ever claiming that the Gemini Protocol
itself is a software project; it is an open standard. That doesn't mean
it magically belongs to everyone and no one should have control of it.
There are criticisms to be had about most standards organizations and
yet I've never seen anyone (other than you, rather) claim that the
standards body shouldn't have control over the standards they maintain
and publish.
Look at the LZMA Specification, it is entirely maintained an published
by one guy (it hasn't been updated since 2015 either). By your logic,
shouldn't he have no rights to it and instead it should never be
modified ever.
And you would be correct. At least already released versions shouldn't be retroactively modified. Releasing further revisions is fine.
It's public domain so you could create and modify your
own right now. Yet veryone would ignore your hypothetical version and
still use his canonical version that he owns and hosts, and nobody other
than you would dispute any future changes he made that diverged from
your version.
~nytpu
-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.