add copyright and license info to the ebml spec

[dericed]

It's unclear if the spec is under the same license and copyright as libEBML. I suggest clarifying this on the spec page: http://matroska-org.github.io/libebml/specs.html

[mbunkus]

@robUx4 Do we really want to have the specs licensed under the LGPL (which is what libEBML is using)? The Matroska legal info page states:

Matroska is an open and free technology. Anyone can use it or modify
it for their own needs without paying any license or patents.

In that spirit I suggest we use something like Creative Commons Attribution or even Creative Commons CC0 No Rights Reserved.

[dericed]

+1 for CC-BY or CC-0

[tessafallon]

RE: IETF, copyright resides with the contributors, though contributors grant the IETF Trust rights to sublicense, create derivative works, etc. (5.3) IETF will own the right to RFCs, in order to prevent unapproved changes to an RFC being published in an RFC format (3.6). By granting rights to the IETF, you're asserting that you have the right to do so and aren't infringing on anyone else's rights or IP. The relevant document is RFC 5378. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5378/?include_text=1

[robUx4]

The specs don't mention any particular copyright notice. So regular copyright rules apply. Except it doesn't say who owns the copyright. In general that's the regulard copyright law that applies. On the matroska.org website there's a copyright footer on all pages. It's missing on the EBML website.

Now I'm fine with giving more rights to the specs so they can be rearranged, modified. But we have to make sure someone doesn't write new specs that are incompatible and say they are the actual specs. So I don't think waiving the copyright as in CC0 is a good idea. But I'm not sure I fully understand how it works.

Once we know the right copyright/CC rule to apply, we should apply it to the Matroska specs too.

[dericed]

Would CC-BY be acceptable? See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
This allows for broad reuse but requires a credit and indicate if changes were made. With this provision if someone did build upon the official MKV specs then they would have to in indicate that they changed the spec and give credit.

[mbunkus]

I would definitely be fine with CC-BY; it was one of the two licenses I've proposed. @robUx4 ?

[robUx4]

Sounds perfect, yes !

[mbunkus]

I've created a repository and added CC BY 4.0 as the license.

What's left is to add author information. On the other hand the libebml repository is not the right place for this issue anymore. Therefore I'm closing it.