BIP 2 revival and rework

Oct 15 - Oct 15, 2016

  • In an email exchange between Tom Zander and Luke Dashjr on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, they discussed the licensing options for Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs).

Zander suggested that BIPs should be public domain under the CC0 license, or have a CC-BY option. Dashjr agreed but had added the MIT/BSD licenses. Zander questioned this addition since BIPs often include code. Dashjr explained that BIP 1 only allows the Open Publication License (OPL) and public domain, so BIP 2 is available under OPL as well, making it acceptable before/until it activates. Zander pointed out that Dashjr likes the public domain license (CC0), yet he encourages BIP 2, which states that public domain cannot be used for BIPs. Dashjr clarified that CC0 and public domain are two different things. Dashjr was asked to reach out to the rest of the community and ensure that BIP 2 has been heard and discussed since the list had not seen much traffic. He stated that he would post to the Lightning-dev and libbitcoin's list about BIP 2 and asked if there were any other Bitcoin development discussion groups that could bring it to their attention for wider review. Finally, Zander suggested that if anyone writes a rationale stating "In some jurisdictions, public domain is not recognized as a legitimate legal action," then they should name those jurisdictions and explain how they support things like GPL. Dashjr confirmed that France and Germany presently do not recognize public domain as a possible status, while GPL is valid anywhere copyright laws exist.

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