Re: Draft HTML5 licensing survey

On Tue, 26 Apr 2011, Sam Ruby wrote:

> On 04/26/2011 01:55 PM, James Graham wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, 26 Apr 2011, Sam Ruby wrote:
>> 
>>> On 04/26/2011 12:11 PM, James Graham wrote:
>>>> On 04/26/2011 05:58 PM, Sam Ruby wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> While some sort of accommodation for input relating to additional
>>>>> options is likely to be in the next draft of the poll; a specific
>>>>> option
>>>>> for MIT is not likely to be included as we have yet to have somebody
>>>>> specifically advocate for that option.
>>>> 
>>>> On 04/25/2011 05:33 AM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>>>> > Specifically, I
>>>> > expect poll survey from Apple representatives would support an MIT
>>>> > license but not CC0.
>>>> 
>>>> You may not consider this as "advocacy" but it is enough to suggest that
>>>> including CC0 (which has clearly been advocated) but not MIT (which has
>>>> merely been "supported") would result in significant information loss.
>>> 
>>> Maciej understands and agrees to the bar as I stated it.
>> 
>> That is good to know, but does not address my point.
>
> We are not going to include unicorns into the survey simply because there 
> might be somebody who might believe that they exist and weakly indicates that 
> if they were to exist they might be helpful.

Happily you are the only person who has mentioned unicorns up to this 
point. Therefore I think we can safely regard them as irrelevant.

>>> There are plenty of licenses that various people have considered and
>>> rejected for one reason or another. We are not going to enumerate all
>>> of them, even if somebody may expect that their company might support
>>> one or more of these options.
>> 
>> This seems to be a slippery slope argument. I don't see that it applies
>> unless there is a demonstration that such a slope actually exists. What
>> are the other licenses that we would be forced to include? I don't
>> recall any other licenses that have been discussed by this group and got
>> any serious measure of support.
>> 
>> What is the reason for excluding options upfront? It seems bizzare to
>> have a poll where options known to have support are prefiltered. It
>> seems particularly strange where the discussion has indicated that the
>> options being removed might represent common ground for at least some of
>> the involved parties.
>
> It is equally as bizarre to have a poll that explicitly includes an option 
> over which absolutely nobody has advocated that option.
>
> James, if you advocate for inclusion of MIT into the poll please make a 
> concrete proposal and state why you believe that it is the right choice for 
> this WG

I have no idea what you mean by a "concrete proposal" in this context.

I think it is quite clear why I think the MIT license should be included; 
it represents an interesting midpoint between CC0 and the Option X 
licenses that may gather more support than either option alone. It has 
already been mentioned by several parties as likely an acceptable option 
including Apple who said they could not support CC0 and Ian [1] — and 
hence presumably Google — who also said they support CC0.

I can't speculate on why these parties find MIT acceptable (although it 
seems that Maciej has addressed this from Apple's point of view since I 
began composing this email). However from my point of view it clearly 
meets the use cases set out by the WG whilst at the same time requiring 
basic attribution, which may increase the social pressure not to fork 
compared to the CC0 option.

Note: for the avoidance of doubt all the above is personal opinion not 
Opera's opinion.

[1] http://www.w3.org/mid/Pine.LNX.4.64.1103071912490.16784@ps20323.dreamhostps.com
[2] http://www.w3.org/mid/5FEF93D8-8C14-4DB7-A807-BF51F59CC598@apple.com