Licenses and Agreements

These licenses and agreements constitute the basic legal foundation of XDI.ORG. These documents represent three generations of development starting in early 2000. As contracts and binding statements of obligation, they reflect hundreds of hours of deliberation and review by dozens of individuals and organizations from across the globe. We believe the result represents the best interests of those who will use and provide XDI infrastructure, including individuals, companies, communities, and service providers.

Full text of each can be found here;

Summaries of each follow.

Summary of the XDI.ORG Intellectual Property Rights Agreement

NOTE: This summary is provided as a convenience to readers and is not intended in any way to modify or substitute for the full text of the agreement.

The purpose of the XDI.ORG IPR Agreement between XDI.ORG and OneName Corporation (dba Cordance) is to facilitate and promote the widespread adoption of XDI infrastructure by transfering the intellectual property rights underlying the XDI technology to a community-governed public trust organization.

The agreement grants XDI.ORG exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to a body of patents, trademarks, copyrights, and specifications developed by Cordance on the database linking technology underlying XDI. In turn, it requires that XDI.ORG manage these intellectual property rights in the public interest and make them freely available to the Internet community as royalty-free open standards. (It specifically adopts the definition provided by Bruce Perens which includes the ability for XDI.ORG to protect against "embrace and enhance" strategies.)

The agreement also requires that XDI.ORG:

Be an international, non-profit public trust organization governed by its users;
Establish a set of Global Services to facilitate interoperability among XDI users;
Always act in the best interests of the user community by (i) representing major constituents in governance, (ii) enabling distributed self-governance and decision making; (iii) building trust and authentic reputations; (iv) avoiding discrimination against XDI community members in good standing; and (v) conducting governance and other operations transparently and with maximum accountability.

It also specifies the ability of XDI.ORG to delegate these responsibilities as necessary to other similar non-profit standards or governance organizations.

Summary of the XDI.ORG License v1

NOTE: This summary is provided as a convenience to readers and is not intended in any way to modify or substitute for the full text of the agreement.

The XDI.ORG License is the sublicense of XDI.ORG's intellectual property rights to all implementers of the XDI open standards as required by XDI.ORG IPR Agreement. It is modeled after the IPR licenses for open standards provided by members of OASIS, W3C, and other standard bodies, and contains provisions typical of such licenses including:

It licenses all implementations conformant to the XDI open standards. For open source implementations, no conformance attestation is necessary. For commercial implementations, a conformance attestation must be provided. This protects against "embrace and enhance" strategies.
Licensees are required to grant a reciprocal license of any rights they may have that are also necessary to practice the XDI open standards.
Licensees may further sublicense on the same terms and conditions.
The term is for the full duration of the intellectual property rights.
The license cannot be terminated unless breached by the licensee.

Summary of the XDI.ORG Global Service Provider Agreement

NOTE: This summary is provided as a convenience to readers and is not intended in any way to modify or substitute for the full text of the agreement.

Global Services are those XDI services offered by Global Service Providers (GSPs) based on the XRI Global Context Symbols (=, @, +, !) to facilitate interoperability of XDI data interchange among all users/members of the XDI community. XDI.ORG governs the provision of Global Services and has the authority to contract with GSPs to provide them to the XDI community.

For each Global Service, XDI.ORG may contract with a Primary GSP (similar to the operator of a primary nameserver in DNS) and any number of Secondary GSPs (similar to the operator of a secondary DNS nameserver). The Secondary GSPs mirror the Primary for loadbalancing and failover. Together, the Primary and Secondary GSPs operate the infrastructure for each Global Service according to the Global Services Specifications published and maintained by XDI.ORG.

The initial XDI.ORG GSP Agreement is between XDI.ORG and OneName Corporation (dba Cordance). The agreement specifies the rights and obligations of both XDI.ORG and Cordance with regard to developing and operating the first set of Global Services. For each of these services, the overall process is as follows:

If Cordance wishes to serve as the Primary GSP for a service, it must develop and contribute an initial Global Service Specification to XDI.ORG.
XDI.ORG will then hold a public review of the Global Service Specification and amend it as necessary.
Once XDI.ORG approves the Global Service Specification, Cordance must implement it in a commercially reasonable period. If Cordance is not able to implement or operate the service as required by the Global Service Specification, XDI.ORG may contract with another party to be the primary GSP.
XDI.ORG may contract with any number of Secondary GSPs.
If XDI.ORG desires to commence a new Global Service and Cordance does not elect to develop the Global Service Specification or provide the service, XDI.ORG is free to contract with another party.

The contract has a fifteen year term and covers a specified set of Global Services. Those services are divided into two classes: cost-based and fee-based. Cost-based services will be supplied by Cordance at cost plus 10%. Fee-based services will be supplied by Cordance at annual fees not to exceed maximums specified in the agreement. These fees are the wholesale cost to XDI.ORG; XDI.ORG will then add fees from any other GSPs supplying the service plus its own overhead fee to determine the wholesale price to registrars (registrars then set their own retail prices just as with DNS). Cordance's wholesale fees are based on a sliding scale by volume and range from U.S. $5.40 down to $3.40 per year for global personal i-names and from U.S. $22.00 down to $13.50 per year for global organizational i-names.

The agreement also ensures all registrants of the original XNS Personal Name Service and Organizational Name Service have the right to convert their original XNS registration into a new XDI.ORG global i-name registration at no charge. This conversion period must last for at least 90 days after the commencement of the new global i-name service.

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