Re: Atom license link last call

[James M Snell <jasnell@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Bob,

Bob Wyman wrote:
> James,
> 	My apologies if these questions and comments have been dealt with
> before:
> 	* What is the expected or intended relationship between data carried
> in the atom:rights element and data pointed to by the license relationship?

The relationship is subtle, but important, consider the following
example pulled from draft-07 that I just published:

     <feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom";>
       <id>http://www.example.com/myfeed</id>
       <title>My Example Feed</title>
       <updated>2005-07-28T12:00:00Z</updated>
       <link href="http://www.example.com/myfeed"; />
       <link rel="license" type="application/rdf+xml"
         href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf"; />
       <rights>
         Copyright (c) 2005. Some rights reserved. This feed
         is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribute-NonCommercial
         Use License. It contains material originally published by
         Jane Smith at http://www.example.com/entries/1 under the
         Creative Commons Attribute License.
       </rights>
       <author><name>James</name></author>
       <entry>
         <id>tag:entries.org,2005:1</td>
         <title>Atom Powered Robots Run Amok</title>
         <updated>2005-06-28T12:00:00Z</updated>
         <link href="http://www.example.org/entries/1"; />
         <summary>Atom Powered Robots Run Amok</summary>
         <author><name>Jane Smith</name></author>
         <link rel="license" type="text/html"
           href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/"; />
       </entry>
     </feed>

Note that the feed level rights element covers the attribute requirement
of the contained element.  The distinction is similar to NOTICE and
LICENSE files distributed with many open source projects.

> 	* Why did you choose the word "license" when Atom itself uses the
> word "rights" for a very similar (if not identical) concept?

Because I specifically wanted to differentiate the two.

> 	* If the intent of the license link is to provide a mechanism to
> support "out of line" rights elements, then did you consider doing something
> similar to the handling of out-of-line atom: content via a "src" attribute?
> For example: Does the license link do anything that would not be
> accomplished by adding support for rights elements in the following form:
> 	<rights src="http://..."/>
> 

Changing the atom:rights element via an extension is out of the
question.  The rights element is what it is.

> 	* If a feed reader discovers both atom:rights and a license link in
> a single entry or feed, is there any concept of precedence between the two?
> For instance, if the text of the license is more or less restrictive than
> what is in the atom:rights element, what should the reader assume about the
> rights that are granted?
> 

The two serve different, but related, purposes.  The two should not
contradict each other.  If they do, consumers must go back to the
content publisher to resolve the problem.


- James