Re: Licensing

On Friday 11 January 2008, Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Jan 2008, Rigo Wenning wrote:
> > I misread your statement as "not license to W3C". 

[...]
>
> You still misunderstand; my point is that I am not willing to
> license my tests under _any_ license

This just means that you do not want to publish them.

> unless the W3C commits to 
> using one of those three licenses for the entirety of the CSS 2.1
> test suite and indeed all other CSS test suites, 

Do you seriously believe that a Member Organization with over 400 
Members will change an established and agreed upon practice just 
because you tiff?

> just like the HTML 
> working group has committed to using the MIT license for their test
> suite.

You know as I know that the HTML WG is a very special test case for 
W3C. And no, the system around the HTML testsuite is far more 
complicated. 

>
> In practice, the W3C document license and the W3C software license
> are violated almost every time a W3C test suite is used, including
> a number of high profile uses that I'm aware of. 

In what way is the license violated by the use of it? Can you be more 
precise. I know I heard of some examples, but everytime? Please give 
me more examples.

> It is pointless 
> for the W3C to be using these licenses if they are not going to be
> enforced. 

Normally we talk gently to people before enforcing but we did enforce 
things. We do not make a big deal or big noise out of it. The edge 
cases we are talking about here are not really the right field for 
enforcement. Copyright has lots of grey area.

> Users of these test suites (three of which have spoken up 
> in this thread, including two of the four biggest browser vendors)
> should be able to use them as they use other test suites now
> without violating the license.

We found a solution for the HTML WG, I will find one for here. And 
this will probably not be to just run with some unconstrained license 
to release the work of the WG factually into the public domain 
without further handle. Nevertheless, I hear that we have to enable 
the open source people to work with the CSS testsuite. We will see 
what team-legal can come up with.

Best, 

Rigo