Re: Spec license

L. David Baron wrote:

> I mean that if:
> 
>  1. we split the spec, and,
> 
>  2. the editor of the part that we split out didn't publish it at
>     WHATWG under a more liberal license than the W3C document
>     license (what I meant above by independently publish under a
>     different license),
> 
> then the part that we split out (or, more precisely, any revisions
> to it) would likely be locked in to a much less permissive license
> that could not be used in many software projects and could not be
> taken outside of W3C if the need arose.

OK, thank you for the clarification : all is now clear.

But it does suggest to me that this is worrying about
the health of individual trees rather than the health
of the whole forest : if we do /not/ split the specification,
then (I re-quote you in parts) "any revisions to" the W3C
specification (as opposed to the WHATWG specification)
"would likely be locked in to a much less permissive license
that could not be used in many software projects and could
not be taken outside of W3C if the need arose."  Is that not
the case ?

I should add that I do not necessarily consider this a problem :
if the licence under which extant W3C specifications have been
released has posed no problems so far, I am unclear why it is
now thought necessary to release the HTML 5 specification under
a different licence.

Philip TAYLOR

Received on Wednesday, 4 February 2009 08:15:54 UTC