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

On May 5, 2007, at 6:09 AM, Terje Bless wrote:

>
> 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.

The W3C Patent Policy applies to all REC-trac specs produced by this  
group, regardless of the source material. So potential patents held  
by members of the Working Group are not a problem.

> 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).

One of the Chairs said, however, that any discussion or information  
that persuaded an objector to withdraw an objection would be helpful.  
Thus my comment above on the patent issues.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Saturday, 5 May 2007 18:39:08 UTC