- From: Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>
- Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:24:44 -0500
- To: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
Background: I'm pursuing this issue. The W3C has a relationship with the SFLC, and yes, that's the same SFLC that is associated with Eben Moglen of FSF fame. Unsurprisingly, they wish to work from use cases (now, where have I heard that before? <grin>). I had sent this email forward as something that captured a number of such use cases, and while it was met favorably, I got a request today that I verify that it represents a position of the Work Group. So, at this time I'm requesting that anybody who has additional use cases and/or wishes to challenge any or all of the use cases listed below please reply on list to this email. If you agree or have no opinion, no response is necessary. - Sam Ruby Henri Sivonen wrote: > > On Feb 3, 2009, at 17:32, Karl Dubost wrote: > >> Le 3 févr. 2009 à 10:10, James Graham a écrit : >>> I should be able to copy sections of the spec text into the source >>> code or testcases and license the whole under an MIT license (I don't >>> recall how often we actually do this in html5lib but I certainly >>> would like to do so more often in the future). >> >> I have difficulties to understand why it is not possible with the >> current W3C Document License. What you are doing is not a derivative >> work nor a full copy of the document, but just quotations of it, which >> is already authorized by the document license. > > Relying on the American Fair Use doctrine or European enumerated but > subjective limitations[1] of copyright such as the right to quote are > not good enough for inclusion of content in a piece of software that is > then as a whole explicitly licensed under an Open Source license. For an > Open Source software whose project management is itself properly > diligent and wants to get the software included in other projects whose > management is diligent, including substantial passages from a spec under > a subjective limitation of copyright (where subjectivity is ultimately > up to a judge) without an explicit license is not acceptable. > > In case the above paragraph seems paranoid, here's where I'm coming > from: Previously a member of W3C staff has relayed to me a "warn[ing]" > from W3C lawyers because I had merged the prose of the HTML5 > tokenization section into the source code of the Validator.nu HTML > Parser as comments. I had copied the text from the WHATWG copy of the > spec, which permits such copying. The "warn[ing]" was quickly retracted, > but I think it is enough to show that it would be unwise for a software > developer to undertake copyright-sensitive actions on the text of an > HTML WG deliverable unless the action is permitted by an explicit license. > > In short, if we wish to address a use case, the use case needs to be > permitted by the spec license. Saying that it counts as a quote or as > Fair Use is not good enough. > >> Maybe we should first identify what are the use cases and see if the >> set of licenses, we have from W3C Document Licenses to others, covers >> or not the use cases. >> >> So far I see >> >> * Publishing the full or parts of a specification in a book to be sold. >> * Include prose of the specification in software from proprietary to >> complete open source >> >> >> Something else? > > * Copying the prose defining an algorithm, pasting it verbatim or with > modifications into source code of a program as comments and writing an > implementation of the algorithm (possibly making creative optimizations) > so that the spec text and the statements of the programming language > intermingle. The resulting program should be licensable under the MIT > license without additional terms. (For algorithms contained in "HTML 5", > this use case is addressed by the WHATWG license, but relying on that > means that the W3C instance of HTML5 can't be treated as the canonical > instance. I'm already exercising this option on the source code of the > Validator.nu HTML Parser under the WHATWG spec license.) > > * Extracting parts of a spec and showing the extracts verbatim or with > modifications in the user interface of a validator. The validator as a > whole including its UI strings should be Open Source and should be > suitable for packaging in popular GNU system distributions including > Debian. Both distributing a copy of the spec text and a program for > extracting pieces of it at runtime and distributing preprocessed > extracts should be permitted. Showing a copyright notice on in the > documentation of the validator is acceptable, but showing a copyright > notice or other legal legends in the UI whenever a spec extract appears > would not be acceptable. (I'm already doing this in Validator.nu under > the WHATWG spec license. However, I'd be interested in having the option > to do this with the authoring guide/reference deliverables of the WG and > with the SVG and MathML specs.) > > * Extracting the WebIDL parts of the spec and incorporating them > verbatim or with modifications into the source code trees of > implementations of the spec. Such inclusion should not interfere with > LGPLv2.1 or later (Gecko, WebKit), GPLv2 or later (Gecko), MPL 1.1 or > later (Gecko), Apache Software License 2.0 (Batik) or the licensing > models of Opera and IE. > > * Extracting the CSS parts of the spec and incorporating them verbatim > or with modifications into the source code trees of implementations of > the spec. Such inclusion should not interfere with LGPLv2.1 or later > (Gecko, WebKit), GPLv2 or later (Gecko), MPL 1.1 or later (Gecko), > Apache Software License 2.0 (Batik) or the licensing models of Opera and > IE. > > * Copying prose from the spec and pasting it verbatim or with > modifications into comments or accompanying documentation of a test case > and checking the test case into the source tree of any of the > above-mentioned software projects plus html5lib without interfering with > their licensing or choice of project hosting. > > * Continuing the development of the WG deliverables in a non-W3C venue > if the W3C or the HTML WG cease operations. > > * Forking some or all of the WG deliverables and pursuing an > alternative development path outside the W3C even without the W3C or the > HTML WG ceasing operations. (That is, I think what Rob Burns is doing on > the HTML4All wiki should be allowed.) > > I believe licensing the spec under the MIT license[2] would address all > the above use cases to my satisfaction. > > Additional use cases that I think are worthwhile but that I'm less > interested in advocating personally: > > * Taking WG deliverables in whole or part and repurposing content into > a book that is given gratis or sold on paper or as a digital file. > > * Using extracts from WG deliverables in documentation published on > developer.mozilla.org. > > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitations_and_exceptions_to_copyright > [2] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
Received on Saturday, 14 February 2009 00:25:20 UTC