Sax

Licensing

These answers are from David Megginson, who made the original decision to put SAX into the Public Domain.

Why is SAX in the Public Domain? Why not LGPL or another open-source license?

There are two reasons:

A license is a threat -- follow the terms or I'll sue you. I don't like to make threats because (a) it's rude, and (b) I know that I could never afford to sue a big company like Sun, Microsoft, Oracle, or IBM anyway, so it would be undignified to pretend.

Open source licenses cause big headaches for project managers, and not only because of the recent anti-GPL FUD coming out of Redmond -- including an LGPL or MPL component in a private system may delay a project for weeks trying to get approval from the legal department and senior management, at least until the company adapts its culture to an open-source world.

I respect and use the GPL and other open-source licenses when I work on other projects, of course, and I appreciate all of the good that the GPL has done for the world.

Is the SAX name trademarked?

No: I (David Megginson) assert no intellectual property rights over it. You can use the names SAX or Simple API for XML for anything you want, anywhere you want. That doesn't mean that you can use my name any way you want.

May we include part or all of the SAX code and/or documentation in a book or on a CD?

See the previous answers. SAX is in the Public Domain, so you can do whatever you want with it. There is no need for clearance editors at publishing companies to ask for permission.

Why do so many Canadians work with XML?

It's the only international career open to us if we're not good skaters.