Re: Option 3

On 03/09/2011 09:36 AM, Smylers wrote:
>>
>> Within Lawrence Rosen's reply to Ian is
>>
>> "So W3C probably can't actually use copyright law to prevent the
>> forking of a specification no matter how desperately some W3C members
>> want to do that.
>
> That's "probably". If we agree this is a situation we wish to be allowed
> then only "probably" allowing it is a failure. What's the disadvantage
> in definitely and unambiguously allowing it?

I'll note that a lot of the discussion to date is concerning 
hypothetical situations, some of which is of the form of somebody 
unspecified doing something that clearly is an edge case and whether or 
not implicit authorization is sufficient for such a case.  Given that we 
have gathered here a collection of authors, implementers, and 
specifiers; are there any chances that we can come up with specific, 
tangible, first person use cases to explore with respect to this license?

I'll further note that once we have such a first person use case, we 
have had the request that such be addressed explicitly vs implicitly:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Feb/0093.html

On 03/07/2011 08:25 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>>> Secondly, this license does not appear to be GPL-compatible, because
>>> > > it applies additional constraints (e.g. it does not allow the content
>>> > > to be merged into a non-software product).
>> > That is not accurate.
>>
> That paragraph was written by one of our lawyers.

OK, so lawyers disagree.  This is hardly the first time such has ever 
happened.

A question for Ian: if such a license were to appear on the following 
page, would that address the concern?

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#W3C

On 03/07/2011 06:15 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> As this is a new license, it further increases license proliferation,
> which Google finds objectionable.

It is my expectation that at some point in the relatively near future 
that there will be W3C Member survey.  You might wish to alert your AC 
representative of this possibility and prepare them to clearly state 
Google's position on this topic at such time.

- Sam Ruby

Received on Wednesday, 9 March 2011 17:52:15 UTC