Re: W3C specs reformatted

* Janet Daly wrote:
>Bjoern, I am curious why you are pursuing this thread, as it was not 
>your request.

I would like to ensure that I fully understand W3C's policies in this
regard, especially since I distribute works under the terms of the IPR
FAQ (though with respect to section 5.6 rather than section 5.9). I
would also like to avoid giving people false advise in a discussion on
such matters.

>In the case of the reformatted documents referenced in the thread: To 
>avoid confusion wrt normative versions, there has to be a compelling 
>reason to allow for publication. In this case, there was no compelling 
>reason that would outweigh the confusion factor.

Ok, I wish you had cited this reasoning and explicitly stated that W3C
does not grant its permission for this particular derived work, rather
than insisting that publishing reformatted documents is not allowed at
all. Specifically [1] gave me the impression that the IPR FAQ was
considered irrelevant in this case.

It is however still not clear to me which terms of the IPR FAQ have not
been met by the works in question and I worry a bit about the confusion
factor you cite. Specifically, if the reformatted version includes a
header ala [2] there seems to be no confusion factor at all. Could you
please expand on what requirements were not met?

Hm, I also worry about these compelling reasons. The example in the IPR
FAQ is a conversion of the normative HTML/XHTML document to PDF. The
works in question were a conversion to CHM, so this gives me the
impression that W3C considers PDF a more compelling format than CHM. I
am certain this is not what you meant, maybe you could clarify what
would be compelling reasons to grant permission reformat a document?

I am afraid the translation project was a bad example in this context
since translations (and annotated versions) are covered by different
terms in the IPR FAQ and the value such works add is obvious, while I
am no longer certain what section 5.9 attempts to cover that would not
apply to the works in question.

I would like to point out that section 5.9 of the IPR FAQ does not
discuss compelling reasons, if such reasons are a requirement to get
permission to reformat a document, it, in my opinion, needs to be
clearly stated there.

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/site-comments/2004May/0065.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/translation-example.html

Thanks for your time Janet!

Received on Thursday, 3 June 2004 15:48:48 UTC