etc/schema

etc/schema

[Richard M. Stallman]

What is in the directory etc/schema?  It has no README file, and the
files seem to be in a language I do not know.

Re: etc/schema

[Lennart Borgman]

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 8:40 PM, Richard M. Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> What is in the directory etc/schema?  It has no README file, and the
> files seem to be in a language I do not know.

It is relax rng schema files used by nxml-mode. It is another format
for DTD specifications.

etc/schema

[Richard M. Stallman]

These files have no copyright notices and no license notices.  It
appears they are not free software.  Unless they were released
elsehere with free software licenses, we must remove them now.

We could try to find out who has the copyright and ask them
to release these properly as free software.  If that succeeds,
we could restore them.

How does nxml mode use them?

Re: etc/schema

[Lennart Borgman]

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 9:45 PM, Richard M. Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> These files have no copyright notices and no license notices.  It
> appears they are not free software.  Unless they were released
> elsehere with free software licenses, we must remove them now.
>
> We could try to find out who has the copyright and ask them
> to release these properly as free software.  If that succeeds,
> we could restore them.

All of them came with nXml as far as I know. Should not the copyright
for nXml cover these files too?

> How does nxml mode use them?

They are used for validation of XML documents and completion during editing.

Re: etc/schema

[Vinicius Jose Latorre]

Lennart Borgman wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 9:45 PM, Richard M. Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>   
>> These files have no copyright notices and no license notices.  It
>> appears they are not free software.  Unless they were released
>> elsehere with free software licenses, we must remove them now.
>>
>> We could try to find out who has the copyright and ask them
>> to release these properly as free software.  If that succeeds,
>> we could restore them.
>>     
>
> All of them came with nXml as far as I know. Should not the copyright
> for nXml cover these files too?
>   

Some of these files have this copyright notice:

# File dbhierx.mod .....................................................

# Copyright 1992-2002 HaL Computer Systems, Inc.,
# O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., ArborText, Inc., Fujitsu Software
# Corporation, Norman Walsh, Sun Microsystems, Inc., and the
# Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
# Standards (OASIS).
#
# $Id$
#
# Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute the DocBook DTD
# and its accompanying documentation for any purpose and without fee
# is hereby granted in perpetuity, provided that the above copyright
# notice and this paragraph appear in all copies.  The copyright
# holders make no representation about the suitability of the DTD for
# any purpose.  It is provided "as is" without expressed or implied
# warranty.
#
# If you modify the DocBook DTD in any way, except for declaring and
# referencing additional sets of general entities and declaring
# additional notations, label your DTD as a variant of DocBook.  See
# the maintenance documentation for more information.
#
# Please direct all questions, bug reports, or suggestions for
# changes to the docbook@lists.oasis-open.org mailing list. For more
# information, see http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/.


>> How does nxml mode use them?
>>     
>
> They are used for validation of XML documents and completion during editing.
>   

Re: etc/schema

[Richard M. Stallman]

    # Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute the DocBook DTD
    # and its accompanying documentation for any purpose and without fee
    # is hereby granted in perpetuity, provided that the above copyright
    # notice and this paragraph appear in all copies.  The copyright
    # holders make no representation about the suitability of the DTD for
    # any purpose.  It is provided "as is" without expressed or implied
    # warranty.
    #
    # If you modify the DocBook DTD in any way, except for declaring and
    # referencing additional sets of general entities and declaring
    # additional notations, label your DTD as a variant of DocBook.  See
    # the maintenance documentation for more information.

That looks like a free software license, but one needs to see
the "maintenance documentation" to we sure.  Where is that?

Lacking any other information, we have to assume that this
only covers the files in which it is present.

Re: etc/schema

[Richard M. Stallman]

    All of them came with nXml as far as I know. Should not the copyright
    for nXml cover these files too?

Not necessarily.  Copyright does not work that way.
It depends who holds copyright on any given file.

What language are they written in?
They have an abominable lack of docmentation.

Re: etc/schema

[jasonr]

Quoting "Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>:

> These files have no copyright notices and no license notices.

They are all conversions from OASIS and W3C released specifications.

Some of the DocBook ones do have notices, but we could take this opportunity
anyway to update to DocBook 5.0, which is officially released in RELAX format
here: http://www.docbook.org/xml/5.0/rng/

RDF, XHTML and XSL are all W3C standards, the DTDs for which appear to be
released under a license that the owners intended to be Free (see
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231), but the
words "without fee" may be a problem.

Re: etc/schema

[Chong Yidong]

jasonr@f2s.com writes:

> Quoting "Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>:
>
>> These files have no copyright notices and no license notices.
>
> They are all conversions from OASIS and W3C released specifications.

I've added a README file to etc/schema, containing license information
about the files in that directory.  Except for 3 files:

 - locate.rnc and schemas.xml are part of nXML mode. (Can someone
   confirm that?)

 - soextbl.rnc is derived from the XML Exchange Table Model Document
   Type Definition, which is Copyright (C) 1999 The Organization for the
   Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).  The
   specification itself may be viewed at

    http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/tm9901.html

   and is released under the following license:

     Permission to reproduce parts or all of this information in any
     form is granted to OASIS members provided that this information by
     itself is not sold for profit and that OASIS is credited as the
     author of this information.

   We may have to remove this file.  Richard?

Re: etc/schema

[Richard M. Stallman]

	http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/tm9901.html

       and is released under the following license:

	 Permission to reproduce parts or all of this information in any
	 form is granted to OASIS members provided that this information by
	 itself is not sold for profit and that OASIS is credited as the
	 author of this information.

       We may have to remove this file.  Richard?


That is not a free software license.  We definitely have to delete that.

Re: etc/schema

[Chong Yidong]

"Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> 	http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/tm9901.html
>
>        and is released under the following license:
>
> 	 Permission to reproduce parts or all of this information in any
> 	 form is granted to OASIS members provided that this information by
> 	 itself is not sold for profit and that OASIS is credited as the
> 	 author of this information.
>
>        We may have to remove this file.  Richard?
>
>
> That is not a free software license.  We definitely have to delete that.

Okay, I've removed the OASIS XML Exchange Table specs and those schema
depending on it.  The remaining files, as detailed in the README file,
are under permissive free software licenses.

Re: etc/schema

[Richard M. Stallman]

    They are all conversions from OASIS and W3C released specifications.

1. Could you explain what "conversions from" means?

2. What license did OASIS and W3C release these with?
(I will look at the file you sent me; does it apply 
to each and every one of these files?)

3. Supposing that that license is a free license,
we may be able to use these files, but we cannot discard
the copyright notices and license notices!

Re: etc/schema

[jasonr]

Quoting "Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>:

>     They are all conversions from OASIS and W3C released specifications.
>
> 1. Could you explain what "conversions from" means?

I initially thought they were automated conversions to Relax NG Compact Schema
format from XML schemas and DTDs using Jim Clark's trang conversion tool. But
further investigation shows that some are manually created from the written
specs by Jim Clark and Norman Walsh.

The XHTML files seem to originate here:
http://www.thaiopensource.com/relaxng/xhtml/
The page states they were created manually by Jim Clark.

The DocBook related files originate here:
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/relaxng/1.0b1/index.shtml
The README file seems to suggest that they were initially converted from DTDs by
an automated tool, but the word initially implies later modifications were made
(by Norman Walsh, it appears).

xslt.rnc is from here: http://www.thaiopensource.com/relaxng/xslt.rng
The comment at the top states that it is mostly an automated conversion from the
XSLT recommendation, http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt, which says

Copyright  ©  1999 W3C® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability,
trademark, document use and software licensing rules apply.

(where liability, trademark, document use and software licensing link to the
relevant sections of http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ipr-notice.html,
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-documents.html and
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-software.html

The W3C software license is listed as GPL compatible at gnu.org, but the
document license does not seem to be Free, as it includes the text

"No right to create modifications or derivatives of W3C documents is granted
pursuant to this license. However, if additional requirements (documented in
the Copyright FAQ) are satisfied, the right to create modifications or
derivatives is sometimes granted by the W3C to individuals complying with those
requirements."


rdfxml.rnc originates here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-rdf-syntax-grammar-20030123/#section-Schemas
and is credited to Jim Clark and Dave Beckett with the same notices on the
containing document as XSLT above. The W3C Copyright FAQ 5.10 states that
unless comments in the schema state otherwise, schema's and DTDs generally fall
under the W3C software license even when included as part of a spec that is
under the W3C documentation license.

relaxng.rnc originates here: http://www.relaxng.org/relaxng.rng
Although it contains no copyright and license details, it appears to have been
written by James Clark, but it may have been part of the OASIS standardization,
in which case copyright and license may be determined by OASIS.

schemas.xml and locate.rnc are part of nxml-mode, used for mapping schemas to
documents.

> 2. What license did OASIS and W3C release these with?
> (I will look at the file you sent me; does it apply
> to each and every one of these files?)

See above - the situation with XHTML schemas seems to be different than
etc/schemas/README describes, as these schemas were manually created based on
the spec rather than automatically created. Also the status of xslt.rnc as a
derivative of the XSLT Recommendation needs clarification.

Re: etc/schema

[Chong Yidong]

Thanks.  I've tried to update the README file with some of this
information.

> relaxng.rnc originates here: http://www.relaxng.org/relaxng.rng
> Although it contains no copyright and license details, it appears to
> have been written by James Clark, but it may have been part of the
> OASIS standardization, in which case copyright and license may be
> determined by OASIS.

This is something of a corner case, I suppose, since James Clark has
assigned copyrights for nxml-mode to the FSF.  Maybe the FSF can weigh
in on this matter.  At the moment, the README lists the license for the
OASIS specification in which the contents of relaxng.rnc also appear.

> the situation with XHTML schemas seems to be different than
> etc/schemas/README describes, as these schemas were manually created
> based on the spec rather than automatically created. Also the status
> of xslt.rnc as a derivative of the XSLT Recommendation needs
> clarification.

I don't know how much of a difference the manual conversion makes---I
think they still count as derived works.  Anyway, if they are licensed
under the W3C Software License as you explained (thanks), it's not a
problem either way.