Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP 2 revival and rework

From: Marco Falke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2016 17:02:30 +0200

On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 4:21 PM, Tom Zander via bitcoin-dev
<[email-masked]> wrote:
>> > My suggestion (sorry for not explaining it better) was that for BIPS to
>> > be a public domain (aka CC0) and a CC-BY option and nothing else.
>>
>> Indeed, we agree that BIPs should be licensed as permissive as
>> possible. Still, I wonder why you chose otherwise with BIP 134.
>> (Currently OPL and CC-BY-SA)
>
> OPL was the only allowed option apart from CC0.

I think you are misunderstanding what is allowed and what is required...

BIP1: "Each BIP must either be explicitly labelled as placed in the
public domain (see this BIP as an example) or licensed under the Open
Publication License"

So BIP1 *requires* PD or OPL but does not forbid other licenses. For
example, you are free to multi license OPL (and additionally: BSD,
MIT, CC0, ...)

BIP2: "Each new BIP must identify at least one acceptable license in
its preamble."

So BIP2 *requires* an acceptable license but does not forbid other
choices. For example, you are free to choose: BSD (and additionally:
PD, CC-BY-SA, WTFPL, BEER, ...)

>> BIP 2 does not forbid you to release your work under PD in
>> legislations where this is possible
>
> It does, actually.

Huh, I can't find it in the text I read. The text mentions "not
acceptable", but I don't read that as "forbidden".

>
>> One
>> of the goals of BIP 2 is to no longer allow PD as the only copyright
>> option.
>
> That's odd as PD was never the only copyright option.

Right. Though, up to now the majority of the BIP authors chose PD as
the only option.

Marco