Re: Draft W3C Excerpt License (Re: WG Decision - spec license use cases)

The problem with open source licenses and trademarks is that the licenses generally grant permission to use whatever is distributed without restriction. Some of them allow you to require a name change for derivative works, but I don't know of any that cover logos in the same way.

Most licenses seem to intend to cover only copyright, but their actual text is so broad that their intent becomes unclear.

One possible solution might be to adopt a very liberal license for the body of the text without the front matter, and make the resulting headerless spec available separately. This would only thwart derivatives that wish to retain the same title, but those are confusing, and I understand reluctance to allow them outside the w3c process.

- Rob

Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:

>
>On Mar 5, 2009, at 3:57 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>>
>>> I think that in practice, W3C specifications will remain canonical  
>>> and
>>> authoritative, not because of licensing, but because the W3C is
>>> respected as an organization, and is seen as the definitive source of
>>> Web standards. So long as W3C remains a good steward, forks will not
>>> happen or at least will not go anywhere. If it fails to be a good
>>> steward, forks will happen no matter what the license says.
>>
>> Indeed. I think it's W3Cs name, not its licenses, that makes people
>> honor its specifications.
>
>Responding since this quoted bit was originally my comment.
>
>Perhaps the W3C's needs could be addressed via trademark rather than  
>copyright licensing. It seems fair to say no one should be able to  
>claim a derivative work is W3C HTML5, or to use the W3C's logo, or to  
>otherwise misrepresent the nature of the work. I believe LGPL and GPL  
>are compatible with names or logos being trademarked, and with a  
>requirement that differences to the original must be clearly  
>indicated; indeed they have such a requirement themselves.
>
>I will agree with Sam though that it's better to get an opinion from  
>someone like Eben Moglen on these issues than to speculate.
>
>Regards,
>Maciej
>
>