Re: copyright issue [RE: Formal Objection to Questions 1 and 2; Abstention on Question 3]

david.dailey@sru.edu (Dailey, David P.) wrote:

>Hi Greg. You know it is interesting that you raise this question. When it
>came time to vote, I noticed the copyright notice for the first time and
>was curious about it. I had planned to ask a question or point of order or
>something in www-archive (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/
>).  I got busy and forgot.

The WHAT WG submission, linked from the ballot, says:

[[[
   If the group is agreeable to these proposals, Apple, Mozilla
   and Opera will agree to arrange a non-exclusive copyright
   assignment to the W3 Consortium for HTML5 specifications.
]]]

My non-lawyer understanding was that this addressed the 
Copyright concern.

As best I can tell there is still the issue of making sure this 
submission is covered under the Royalty-Free Patent Policy — 
and I would very much like to see that explicitly addressed (cf. 
e.g. the lawyer-gram from Apple on <canvas>) — but I expect 
that these issues are actually being handled or have been noted 
and will in due time be handled.


However, as I understand it, now that the vote is closed (in 
fact, ever since the question was posted) with lack of Consensus 
— i.e. in the presence of Formal Objections — the 
discussions should cease until the Chairs decide to either let 
the question carry over the objections — in which case the 
question is shelved until the WG asks for progress to e.g. CR 
and the Director reviews the objection — or that the question 
needs to be reopened (in which case the discussions continue 
with the aim of achieving Consensus).

IOW, I think we need to let the Chairs handle this now (they're 
probably allowed to seek the WGs input if they feel that would 
be useful), and I'm confident they will be able to sort this all 
out one way or another (unfun as that may be for them).

The above with the obvious caveat that I may have misunderstood 
the details of the Process and its implications on this point, 
for which I apologize should that be so.


-- 
“Allright… Calm down! Relax! Start breathin´…”         
-- Dr. D.R.E.

Received on Saturday, 5 May 2007 13:09:56 UTC