Why don't I see an "Edit" action?
As a logged in editor, you can edit any page in the 'wiki:' category, the 'main:' category, and your own pages in the spec: category. The block on editing other people's specifications is deliberate, to force a single responsible editor.
Is this site the official AMQP working group?
This is a community site, open to anyone with useful ideas and contributions. The idea is to feed good ideas into the AMQP specification process and provide the AMQP community with a way to get involved.
Do I need to sign something?
No, this site uses a click-through agreement. You agree to publish your contributions as "source code" under the GPLv3. It's a lot like contributing to a free software project.
Why don't you centralize copyrights?
While we use centralized copyrights for some projects, it's more work. It needs a legal entity, and signed paperwork. We want the process to be simpler. Shared copyright appears to work just as well, so long as contributors grant some rights, such as the right to relicense the work if needed.
Why the GPLv3? Does this mean implementations are GPLv3-infected?
GPLv3 appears to be the best license for the development of share-alike specifications. It has good patent provisions, which we need. It's got excellent lawyers working to make it robust. And no, it has no impact on the software you might develop, it applies only to specifications.
What is the review process for specifications?
We don't have any formal review process. We don't have any top-down decision about what state a specification is in: this entirely up to the responsible editor. All the weight that a specification carries comes from adoption.
This is simple to abuse!
Maybe. If we find people abusing the process to make life hard for others (their competitors, we assume), and if this is considered "abuse" by a majority of the operators, we'll fix the rules.
So how do I become an operator
Contribute, be good, and you may get an invitation.
Who owns the specifications?
Every contributor owns their original work, and specifications are owned by all contributors together.
Who is in charge?
No-one, except the Operators, that is, the people who set-up this site and wrote the first rules. The operators don't intervene in specifications. They only intervene in questions about the rules and the site's operation.
What protection do we have against patent ambush
To be honest, not a huge amount. Yes, any firm contributing to a specification must make a promise to license any relevant and necessary patents, for free, to everyone, forever. But other firms can, and probably will, patent stuff they think is useful, with the goal of ambushing successful markets afterwards. You could do worse than to help stop software patents.
What if I'm an employee?
As for any contribution to an open source project, you must get written permission from your employer before discussing on an email list or writing stuff on a wiki. Otherwise you're perhaps in breach of your employment contract and may cause other people some problems down the line. In the worst case, your contributions will be removed and/or rewritten.
If you have other questions please ask the public mailing list.
