- From: Alex Rousskov <rousskov@measurement-factory.com>
- Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 18:29:56 -0600 (MDT)
- To: www-qa@w3.org
Hi there, "N Weeks on the QA mailing lists" summary mentions "Special W3C Test license" issue and quotes an e-mail by Kirill Gavrylyuk arguing that a special license should be created because test materials differ sufficiently from general-purpose W3C software[1]. I would like to suggest that when/if this special license is prepared, it is tuned to accommodate 3rd-party test materials that are developed by commercial organizations. For example, my company would like to make our HTTP/1.1 compliance test suite available to/through W3C. However, the current W3C software license would make that difficult. While there is really no significant gain from allowing suite users to "copy, modify, and distribute" the suite, the current one-size-fits-all license requires that. I understand that most current suites are developed by organizations that do not pay bills by selling their testing software (e.g., NIST). However, it would be great if W3C could accommodate companies that are willing to share their tools as long as that does not run them out of business. If nothing else, it would help to make W3C test collection diverse and complete. IMO, the special license should address the needs specific to test suites authors and users without enforcing irrelevant policies. Thank you, Alex. [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa-wg/2002Jun/0014.html
Received on Monday, 29 July 2002 20:29:58 UTC