A proposal to freeze the Gemini specification

[Alex // nytpu]

On 2021-10-26 12:20AM, almaember wrote:
> He merely owns the website/capsule it's hosted on. Taking and hosting
> it, or even rewording it to avoid copyright issues, is a relatively
> simple task.
If I take a copy of whitehouse.gov and replace all the text with "lol
the government's dumb" does that make it the official whitehouse.gov
site?  Solderpunk hosts the canonical version (which you said yourself
is the one everyone follows) which means they're the one that "owns"
the Gemini specification.

> GitLab doesn't own the GitLab specification just because it's hosted
> there, and neither does the operator of this mailing list own this
> message.
And yet I both host and own nytpu.com.

Yes hosting =/= ownership, however in most cases (on Gemini at least)
hosting *is* equivalent to ownership.

> And, lastly this is not an open source project per se. More like a set
> of conventions projects agree on. In other words, a standard.
I don't recall anyone anywhere ever claiming that the Gemini Protocol
itself is a software project; it is an open standard.  That doesn't mean
it magically belongs to everyone and no one should have control of it.
There are criticisms to be had about most standards organizations and
yet I've never seen anyone (other than you, rather) claim that the
standards body shouldn't have control over the standards they maintain
and publish.

Look at the LZMA Specification, it is entirely maintained an published
by one guy (it hasn't been updated since 2015 either).  By your logic,
shouldn't he have no rights to it and instead it should never be
modified ever.  It's public domain so you could create and modify your
own right now.  Yet veryone would ignore your hypothetical version and
still use his canonical version that he owns and hosts, and nobody other
than you would dispute any future changes he made that diverged from
your version.

~nytpu

-- 
Alex // nytpu
alex@nytpu.com
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