Re: Scope Proposal

On 11/14/2011 02:04 PM, Marcos Caceres wrote:
> (Sorry to be a PITA)

You're not ;)
These are good questions. Let me try to answer...


> On Monday, 14 November 2011 at 13:46, Francois Daoust wrote:
>
>>
>> Something can only become an Essential Claim by being part of a Specification.
> We will be making recommendations to other WGs about changes they should make to their specs. We may propose solutions that may be included into those specifications: hence, we are generating IPR.

In order to be covered by the CLA a contribution needs to appear in a Specification, and what we're saying is that the CG won't produce any Specification. Email exchanges, Wiki pages and so on won't count as a Specification unless flagged as such.

More info on CG deliverables at:
  http://www.w3.org/community/about/agreements/#comm-deliverables

The CG may discuss and propose a solution but it won't be covered by the CLA since the notion of Essential Claims in the CLA is restricted to contributions made to a Specification.


>> No specification means no essential claim, so the assertion looks good. Instead of a raw "there will not be", I would have proposed "the group does not anticipate producing material subject to" to avoid having to ask ourselves whether the legal assertion is valid (yes/no questions tend not to have a yes/no answer when legal experts get asked ;)) but the intent is the same and my reply comes in a bit late, so scope is good as-is.
>
>
> Does the above matter? Consider.
>
> 1. CG identifies issue X.
> 2. CG comes up with awesome solution Y.

Basically, we're saying here that CG won't "come up" with awesome solution Y, where "come up" means that solution Y won't be included in a Specification, because CG won't produce any Specification.


> 3. CG proposes Y to Working Group Z.

CG should probably rather propose issue X, motivated by use cases.


> 4. Working Group Z includes Y wholesale into their spec A.

Since solution Y is not in a Specification covered by the CLA, Working Group Z would need to assess whether it can include Y, which usually means enforcing that whoever contributed to that proposal joins the Working Group, as with any other substantive contribution that comes from outside of a Working Group.


> 5. Unknowing CG member has patent on Y.

In practice, this whole thing also means that the CG should not spend too much time trying to find awesome solution Y since working groups will have a hard time integrating it if the origin of the solution is unclear or if they cannot get commitments from companies who participated in their elaboration.

Francois.

Received on Monday, 14 November 2011 14:01:44 UTC