- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2012 20:38:22 +0000 (UTC)
- To: David Bruant <bruant.d@gmail.com>
- cc: Kyle Huey <me@kylehuey.com>, Ms2ger <ms2ger@gmail.com>, public-webapps@w3.org
On Sun, 25 Nov 2012, David Bruant wrote: > > The intent is clear: the WHATWG publishes documents in the public domain > for very good reason. Anyone (W3C included!) can reuse them under close > to no condition, not even credit. I can speak pretty authoritatively to the intent, if that's what you are interested in. The relevant philosophy in the WHATWG context is multi-pronged: 1: Specs should be reusable in software, documentation, tutorials, and the like, without any barrier, whether free software or proprietary software, whether in books printed for money or FAQs that are themselves free to copy, whether in online courses with $10,000 entry fees or demos on street corners that are organised by marketing departments. 2: A spec author can "go bad" without realising it, so it should be possible to fork a specification if that happens, without the author having any control over this. 3: Forking specifications, publishing multiple copies of specifications, and publishing easy-to-find-with-a-search-engine snapshots of specifications, are all things that hurt interoperability by making implementors reference different requirements. The only time that forking a specification is justified is #2 above. We use open licenses on our specifications because of #1 and #2. We can't legally prevent #3 while allowing #1 and #2, so we rely on common sense and good faith to achieve #3. HTH, -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Sunday, 25 November 2012 20:38:45 UTC