Putting some FEPs under our CLA

So, I was really happy to see that BlueSky has made a patent 
non-aggression pledge around ATProto:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-01-2025-patent-pledge

It means that we here are able to explore techniques and patterns in 
distributed social networking without having to pursue difficult and 
unnatural paths just to avoid potential patents by Bluesky.

I want to directly say thanks to our CG colleague Bryan Newbold from 
Bluesky for this pledge.

So, how can we reciprocate?


Our specifications, AP and AS2, are already under the W3C patent policy, 
which is pretty comprehensive. The reports and other work that we do as 
part of the CG are covered under the CLA, which is also pretty generous 
w/r/t patents and other licensing.

One part of our ecosystem that isn't covered under a patent license is 
the Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEPs). They use a generous 
copyright license, but there's no licensing for other intellectual property.

A way that we in the CG could be helpful in this area is to do a 
secondary publication of FEPs we have authored on CG services, like a 
GitHub repo, under the rules of the CLA.

So, here's the proposal: that we create an activitypub-extensions 
repository, and copy FEPs that we've authored into that repo. I've done 
~10, so it could kick off pretty quickly, but there are others here who 
could add theirs too.

Evan

Received on Wednesday, 1 October 2025 20:33:56 UTC