Re: Option 3

On Wed, 9 Mar 2011, Sam Ruby wrote:
> 
> I'll note that a lot of the discussion to date is concerning 
> hypothetical situations, some of which is of the form of somebody 
> unspecified doing something that clearly is an edge case and whether or 
> not implicit authorization is sufficient for such a case.  Given that we 
> have gathered here a collection of authors, implementers, and 
> specifiers; are there any chances that we can come up with specific, 
> tangible, first person use cases to explore with respect to this 
> license?
> 
> I'll further note that once we have such a first person use case, we 
> have had the request that such be addressed explicitly vs implicitly:
> 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Feb/0093.html

If we number the nine use cases in that e-mail consecutively starting from 
1, then use cases 6 and 7 are first-person use cases for me. Use case 6 in 
particular is not at all hypothetical, it's what started all this work in 
the first place.


> OK, so lawyers disagree.  This is hardly the first time such has ever 
> happened.

Indeed. But it is a serious problem if lawyers disagree about whether or 
not a license we are considering satisfies the use cases for which we are 
considering the license.

Note: GPL compatibility is not needed for my first-person use cases; my 
use cases do not require the ability to merge the spec with other content. 
GPL compatibility is required for the use cases unrelated to forking, such 
as including substantial portions of the spec in software currently 
licensed under the GPL. As far as I can tell, however, any solution 
compatible with the GPL would automatically enable any forking use case, 
which is why I pay attention to that aspect: I don't mind if my use cases 
are addressed directly with a license that explicitly allows forking the 
specs or indirectly via the GPL.


> A question for Ian: if such a license were to appear on the following 
> page, would that address the concern?
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#W3C

In and of itself, no; but it is likely that addressing the concern would 
also satisfy the requirements for being included on that list.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 9 March 2011 20:04:10 UTC