Re: Licensing

Fantasai, 

short answer as I'm in the middle of a conf..

On Wednesday 12 March 2008, fantasai wrote:
>
> You didn't answer my two questions:
>   >> What's holding you guys up?

Internal discussions over three possible solutions. The process is 
started.

>   >> And when can we expect resolution of this situation?

This does not depend solely on me, so I have difficulties to answer. 
But as this has potentially a very big impact, it needs due 
consideration and due consideration isn't for tomorrow.
>
> > Note well that the CSS testsuite already contains a marked up
> > distinction between tests and harness that can be leveraged in a
> > license allowing to change the harness, but not the tests.
>
> Being able to change the harness scripts doesn't help if the test
> files themselves need to be modified as part of harnessing the
> tests. For example, the MWI's harness adds navigation buttons to
> the tests.

This is a non-issue as the MWI testsuite is a W3C testsuite, thus this 
is a purely internal usage that is not guided by our licenses to the 
outside. So this is not a good example. MWI has to coordinate with 
CSS and take their responsibilities, but this is not a licensing 
issue. 
>
> Changing the harness also doesn't solve the problem of being able
> to create simplified and/or derived versions of the W3C tests to
> expand test coverage or focus on a specific bug. 

Fixing this while maintaining reliability is tricky. I already stated 
that and I think we get into repetition now. 

> As I've noted 
> before open source projects like Mozilla essentially publish every
> testcase they use, either in their bug system or their regression
> test system, both of which are public. Restricting their ability to
> publish modified testcases effectively restricts their ability to
> modify the testcase for any project-internal use.

I've taken notice of that use-case and can assure you that this 
use-case is part of the discussion. It has to be balanced against 
other requirements like keeping a vendor neutral beacon under the 
control of the WG. We are looking for ways to combine the 
requirements and needs, but this is tricky. 

The trickier things get legally, the more complicated they are to 
explain to people in a discussion, thus making the discussion harder, 
thus taking more time. 

Best, 

Rigo