Quote from: lachesis on August 16, 2010, 07:35:31 PM

Let's not overreact: this is a single page of documentation we're talking about. I could reproduce it in a few hours, but I really don't want to if it is eventually going to get released under a permissive license. Let's not alienate one of our best community programmers over a single page of documentation.

Please guys, let's not make this a huge deal. Jgarzik, you could defuse this whole situation by releasing your document under a license that's friendly to copying and cooperation. NLS, please don't be a dick about all of this. Again guys, we're trying to build a community, not a conformity. If Jgarzik doesn't want to allow copying of his document, that's 100% his right. At least he has agreed to release all of his code, patches, etc etc with a MIT license, which is the really important part.

Jgarzik, NLS, etc: I have great respect for all of you and your contributions to Bitcoin. Please, let's not make this a us vs him thing.

I agree that diffusing this situation is the best solution here, and I really don't understand the intransigence on this one issue other than to make a statement of some kind. Yes, he has the technical "right" to insist upon copyright control here.

I have worked with too many proprietary protocol documents that I have vowed to never be tied down to another one again unless the pay is excellent and explicitly required by contract that I've agreed to ahead of time. This is a situation that simply can't stand over time.

I would like to simply be in a position to ignore this "document" provided by Jgarzik completely, but any future documentation written by any other member of the community that may be challenged as potentially a derivative of his document as he is the first person to put this information down in this fashion. In some ways, I'm tempted to simply say "damn the torpedoes" and copy the information in this document anyway.... challenging him to sue me for copyright infringement. It would be a precedent setting case in the very least on a whole bunch of levels and I have no certain idea how a court would end up ruling on the issue although I'm pretty confident that I would get the support of the greater Bitcoin community for standing up to this kind of behavior.

It doesn't have to be this way, and in a way it has become a legal threat to the community as a whole. I don't want to have to document every piece of information I have discovered or go into a "clean room" situation for writing protocol documentation. Simply cooperating with the community is to me a better thing to do as I don't see the benefit for insisting upon a proprietary copyright.