Re: Licensing

On Thursday 10 January 2008, Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Jan 2008, Rigo Wenning wrote:
> > Neither a testsuite nor a specification trying to achieve
> > interoperability is an open-source project.
>
> No, but test suites are imported into open source projects and
> embedded into automated test systems as part of open source
> projects, and thus need to fulfill the conditions needed for open
> source projects. (This also applies to closed-source projects,
> though it is not an issue in this instance since they don't have to
> republish the tests.)

I see the issue. BTW, the W3C Software license was recognized as being 
compatible with the GPL:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/IPR-FAQ-20000620#GNU

This issue is not easy to resolve as it invokes a conflict of 
different interests. We'll have to talk to those people and see how 
we can resolve that.

>
> > Do you think you can have a FIPS-140 certification that you can
> > build yourself and everybody can just alter and run?
>
> These are not certification test suites.

What are the semantics of those test suites? What do they assert 
socially? In all other Groups, tests are contributed back to the 
Group's test suite. And there are many open source projects involved. 

>
> > So Bert is right, lets wait for the requests and think about new
> > solutions if the old ones don't work anymore.
>
> We have three requests now, one from Anne (Opera), one from me
> (Google), and one from David (Mozilla). How many more would you
> like?

I do not consider three requests overwhelming. 

> On Thu, 10 Jan 2008, Rigo Wenning wrote:
> > By doing so, you're not compliant to any of the licenses you
> > mention anymore. So Google would have to refuse your tests too.
>
> This is incorrect, and shows a somewhat fundamental
> misunderstanding of copyright and license law.

...says the lawyer

Best,

Rigo