Re: DOM, Promises, and licensing

On 7/15/2013 7:04 AM, Robin Berjon wrote:
> Hi Chris,
>
> thanks for your level-headed and helpful analysis.
>
> On 12/07/2013 22:50 , Chris Wilson wrote:
>> The Document License, on the other hand, can only seek to protect itself
>> from derivative works being made from the cloth of the document in
>> question: so, if Anne were to take a W3C spec that is under the document
>> license and replicate it, of course that would be prohibited. However,
>> were he to make contributions to a spec under the Document License AND
>> to a non-W3C spec (or even a W3C spec not under such a license), I don't
>> believe the DL by itself can prohibit such contributions.
>
> That is my reading as well. I believe that it does leave one issue 
> open however: if a contribution comes in on the "W3C side" (in itself 
> a rather ill-defined idea, but let's say on a W3C mailing list or 
> during a meeting), under what rules does it fall? Is Anne (or whoever) 
> allowed to integrate it first into a non-W3C document?
>
> In practice I don't believe that it's a huge problem, but it does 
> maintain just the sort of uncertainty that can be a source of worry. 
> That's reinforced by the fact that some prominent W3C members remain 
> strongly opposed to forking licenses (IMHO very much against their 
> best interests, but that's another topic).
>
>> In short - I think the Invited Expert Agreement should be revised, but I
>> believe Anne should not be afraid of running afoul of the IEA in this
>> case, since he's not agreeing to it (as an employee of a Member);
>
> Much agreed.
>
>> At any rate, of course, the statement "...I personally would not want to
>> edit anything that cannot be forked" would likely keep Anne from wanting
>> to contribute to the W3C DOM spec anyway, at this point, so I suspect
>> this may be academic.
>
> I don't think that it is, because it points at a potential solution. A 
> healthy web requires standards that are produced efficiently, by 
> qualified people, in a royalty-free manner. If that requires some form 
> of WHATWG-W3C cooperation — and it is clear that it does — then we are 
> behooved to make it happen. Given the HTML WG licensing experiment 
> becomes a reality, we will have a way forward. Imperfect for sure, but 
> pointing in the right direction.
>
> So to bring this all back on topic for this list, maybe the TAG should 
> issue a short position statement indicating how open licensing is core 
> to the web's values and essential to its continued development.

The scope statement of the TAG is:

"The TAG's scope is limited to technical issues about Web architecture. 
The TAG should not consider administrative, process, or organizational 
policy issues of W3C, which are generally addressed by the W3C Advisory 
Committee, Advisory Board, and Team."

If the TAG wishes to comment on open licensing (which imho is not a 
technical issue about Web architecture) I recommend that it first 
request the Director to expand its charter scope.

>
> You never know, it might win over the last of the irredentist.
>

Received on Monday, 15 July 2013 14:39:30 UTC