Honestly, my critique here is probably just legal nitpicking- I wouldn’t worry about it too much, since so many others do it too- your intent is made clear.

Now, I’ll get back to nagging people about doing something better…

On MSOSP – actually, the process would be fairly simple internally, I think. I am worried about the lack of trust there.

first, not at all taken as snide- it’s a real, serious, hard question.

second, I apologize- I had intended to make it more clear that I don’t blame you; for a long time CC has looked the other way when people have done this. So to the extent there is any blame here, I place it on CC; you tried to do the right thing and they failed you by not correcting the example others set for you.

third: Honestly, I think for you the best solution may be the MS Open Specification Promise- it is comprehensive and straightforward. Not everyone trusts it yet (as the link above mentioned), but there are no better standardized alternatives, and on the plus side, if it is ‘fixed’, your team gets those fixes for free.

That said, I have no idea how hard that process is to use inside Microsoft, and I hope that CC/OSI/others can step up to provide a good alternative for lightweight situations like yours- I’m beginning to poke around, because I think this situation highlights that it is a very real need.

What should we do here? I agree with you on the problem statement (that CC is a copyright, not an IP licensing statement). Let’s all presume for a moment that our intent is to cause the end result that we’ve stated: for example, that we want the OpenServices Format to be free for anyone to implement, and to achieve that end we’d like to state that the spec is placed in the public domain and we would RF-license any IP we own that might be infringed upon by an implementation of said spec. How should we best make that happen, where “best” includes both legal and perception concerns?