Approach to an Everblue Patent / IPR policy

Hi all,

(if you haven't read it yet, probably look at https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2019Jul/0001.html first)

The Proposed Evergreen Patent Policy is derived from the WHATWG's IPR Policy, which is itself derived from the classic W3C Patent Policy. The adaptations proposed by PSIG make it suitable for W3C again, and with a few small changes (see below), I think we can make it apply to the REC track, and use it as a replacement for the current Patent Policy. This would have the following effects:
* Add a contribution licensing obligation
* Make the whole-spec licensing obligation apply at the end of the exclusion period, instead of having to wait (for years) for a REC

To do that, we'd need to:

0. Fix the issues of the Evergreen Patent Policy discussed in https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2019Jul/0001.html
1. Miscellaneous phrasing/editorial fixes such as:
1.1. Call it something non evergreen specific (i.e. "W3C Patent Policy" or "W3C IPR Policy").
1.2. Change all references to "Evergreen Recommendations" / "Evergreen Specifications" into "W3C Technical Reports with a maturity other than Note" (this phrasing covers both REC track documents and Evergreen ones). This is a bit of a mouthful, so we could define a local term ("W3C Specification"?) to avoid repetition.
1.3. Change all references to "Evergreen Participants" into "Working Group Participants"
2. Restore the section about member submissions, which isn't part of the evergreen/whatwg IPR policy
3. Change all references to "Last Call" in the Process  into "Review Draft" (or possibly "IPR Review Draft", and use that term in the IPR Policy as well). This would cover: (1) CRs, (2) RECs+Call for Review of Proposed Corrections, (3) RECs + Call for Review of Proposed Additions.  (Note to Don Deutsch: if you're not familiar with (2) and (3), that's part of the so-called Everblue Proposal https://www.w3.org/wiki/Everwhat_dashboard#EverBlue)
4. Make it possible in the Process for a WD to also be published as a Review Draft

I believe the same results can be achieved taking the current W3C Patent Policy as a starting point instead of the Evergreen one, adding the contribution license commitment, and making the whole-spec licensing obligation apply at the end of the exclusion period instead of at REC, but that is probably more work, given that the WHATWG IPR Policy (and therefore the Evergreen Patent Policy) are largely the result of doing that. It may still be desirable to do this if we wish to:
* minimize editorial changes.
* minimize the risk of accidental changes due to the WHATWG removing W3C-specific provisions, and W3C adding them back in, possibly making mistakes along the way.
* minimize the risk of picking up differences introduced by the WHATWG which would not be intentional on our part.

I have started exploring both approaches in local copies of the documents I haven't shared yet, but before committing too much time to it, I wanted to ask for feedback on which approach people felt was more worth exploring. I can do both, but maybe there's a clear preference for one.

—Florian

Received on Sunday, 7 July 2019 14:39:49 UTC