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
