Re: Licensing

On Wednesday 09 January 2008 13:19, Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Jan 2008, fantasai wrote:
> > Yes, this I agree is a problem, and I'm talking with Rigo about it.
> > But again, if you or Anne have specific examples that would help.
>
> It would presumably be a problem for Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla, and
> Apple, for a start, since all four occasionally have to modify tests
> as part of incorporating them into their test harnesses.

Test suite licenses have been discussed a lot in W3C over the years. The 
current policy[1] is the result. The fact that it has been stable since 
at least 2004 indicates to me that we need more than presumptions 
before discussing it again.

It seems to me that conformance isn't helped by allowing people to make 
modifications to the test suite without review by the WG.

The current license requires that somebody who wants to publish modified 
tests asks permission. (Making and using them is fine.) If W3C gets 
overwhelmed with requests it is early enough to think about a new 
system. The few requests we got so far didn't pose problems.

[1] http://www.w3.org/2004/10/27-testcases



Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos                               W3C/ERCIM
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Wednesday, 9 January 2008 16:13:53 UTC