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

Philippe Le Hegaret wrote:
> 
> You're suggesting that W3C should adopt an open source *software*
> license for a specification. I don't believe we reached consensus on
> that yet.

Following is a message I sent to the SFLC over a month ago.  I've yet to 
hear a response.  Any help you can provide in getting this request 
"unstuck" would be appreciated.

I note that Daniel J. Weitzner is an SFLC Director:

     http://www.softwarefreedom.org/about/team/

- Sam Ruby

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: W3C HTML Spec License
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:34:01 -0500
From: Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>
To: help@softwarefreedom.org

I'm writing this as co-chair of the W3C HTML Working Group.  For
background, the HTML 4 specification is made available with the
following W3CŪ Software Notice and License:

   http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-software-19980720

We are in the process of producing a HTML 5 specification, and a number
of implementers have expressed a desire to incorporate portions of the
specification produced in their implementations.  Such implementations
are currently licensed ranging from MIT, LGPL2 or later, tri licensed
MPL/GPL/LGPL, and proprietary.

While asking for general advice might be a bit much, even an assessment
as to which of our options would be GPL compatible (and if so, to which
versions of GPL) would be most appreciated.  It is not even clear to me
whether the current W3C license has been assessed before for GPL
compatibility.

Options we have discussed include MIT (which may not be ideal for
specs), and cc-by 3.0 Unported (which may not be ideal for code).

- Sam Ruby

Received on Saturday, 7 March 2009 09:52:42 UTC