Re: Draft W3C Excerpt License (Re: WG Decision - spec license use cases)

On Mar 5, 2009, at 18:28, Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no> wrote:

> Maciej Stachowiak 2009-03-06 01.23:
>> On Mar 5, 2009, at 3:57 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>>>> I think that in practice, W3C specifications will remain
>>>> canonical and authoritative, not because of licensing, but
>>>> because the W3C is respected as an organization, and is
>>>> seen as the definitive source of Web standards. So long as
>>>> W3C remains a good steward, forks will not happen or at
>>>> least will not go anywhere. If it fails to be a good steward,  
>>>> forks will happen no matter what the license says.
>>> Indeed. I think it's W3Cs name, not its licenses, that makes
>>> people honor its specifications.
>> Responding since this quoted bit was originally my comment.
>> Perhaps the W3C's needs could be addressed via trademark rather
>> than copyright licensing. It seems fair to say no one should be
>> able to claim a derivative work is W3C HTML5, or to use the
>> W3C's logo, or to otherwise misrepresent the nature of the
>> work. I believe LGPL and GPL are compatible with names or logos
>> being trademarked, and with a requirement that differences to
>> the original must be clearly indicated; indeed they have such a
>> requirement themselves.
>
> So, the issue is about using the spec without displaying anything  
> that makes the user trust that this is the official standard?

Yes. I we don't have any use that requires that the copied text claims  
to be the official HTML5 spec. Just like no fork of firefox can claim  
to be firefox or any fork of debian can claim to be debian.

This can be enforced through trademark policies without relying on  
copyright licences of the text in the spec.

> What about link relations so one can easily point to the authorative  
> version? Perhaps not only CreativeCommmons but even HTML 5 itself  
> needs CURIE support etc?

As long as they are not required that sounds like a fine idea.  
Requiring it would likely be incompatible with MIT and GPL though.

/ Jonas

Received on Friday, 6 March 2009 04:42:39 UTC