Re: Draft HTML5 licensing survey

On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 4:09 PM, Paul Cotton <Paul.Cotton@microsoft.com> wrote:
> At the Weekly WG meeting on Thu Apr 21 the Chairs were asked what type of
> survey they would be carrying out on this topic.  The Chairs have drafted a
> survey on the three licensing options which is available for review at [2].
>
>
>
> Please provide any comments on the structure and instructions on this draft
> licensing survey in response to this message.  The Chairs will evaluate this
> input before posting the final survey.

It was clear from previous discussion that Google, Mozilla, and a
number of individuals were strongly opposed to all three proposed
licenses, and that many Working Group members would prefer a
well-established permissive license.  Could a fourth option be added,
something like "some permissive license such as MIT or CC0 that
permits forking"?  I realize that this option has been rejected
already by the Advisory Committee, but if the purpose of this survey
is to gauge the opinion of the HTMLWG, it makes sense to allow those
who support a fourth option to clearly say so.  That way,
decision-makers in other parts of the W3C can accurately gauge how
strong that support is, which might affect their position or at least
their understanding of the situation.

Of course, some indication should be made in the survey that W3C
Management has explicitly rejected the fourth option and is not
considering it.  But since this survey (unlike most HTMLWG surveys)
does allow for supporting an option, not just opposing, it would be
valuable to take the opportunity to gauge support for the fourth
option now that we all know it's been rejected -- which might differ
from support before it was rejected.

Received on Friday, 22 April 2011 21:56:29 UTC