Re: Proposed Permissive Copyright Experiment in HTML Working Group

On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 1:49 PM, Philippe Le Hegaret <plh@w3.org> wrote:
> Today the W3C Director proposed to the W3C Membership a draft revision
> to the HTML Working Group charter:
>  http://www.w3.org/html/wg/charter/2013/
>
> The charter is unique because of a provision that would let the group
> decide whether to publish extension specifications under CC-BY, which is
> more permissive than W3C's Document License. The proposal intends to
> encourage collaboration.
>
> The W3C Membership reviewed a draft HTML Working Group charter in
> February when one Member registered a Formal Objection and requested
> changes around licensing. Given the importance of this issue and a new
> proposal focused on extension specifications, the Director now seeks
> feedback from the Membership.
>
> The HTML extension specifications present an opportunity to experiment
> with an alternate, more permissive license, in response to Member
> feedback. We anticipate that the experiment can inform broader licensing
> discussions.
>
> We look forward to hearing from the full Membership on this important
> topic; Member feedback will play an important role in our next steps.

I strongly support this.  The previous stance, often justified with
the argument that the restrictive copyright was necessary to "prevent
forking", was terrible.  We should prevent forking by continuing to
publish the best specification, not by trying to takedown
alternatives.

~TJ

Received on Wednesday, 1 May 2013 21:08:33 UTC