Re: What is the license of w3c ontologies and vocabularies?

Hi Stian,

I’ll forward the question to the legal team!

Ian

> On Mar 18, 2016, at 10:29 AM, Stian Soiland-Reyes <soiland-reyes@cs.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> Hi, in Apache Taverna we try to use PROV, and part of that is to embed
> https://www.w3.org/ns/prov-o.ttl
> in our source code to avoid external dependencies.
> 
> As we discuss in
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TAVERNA-927
> .. now we are not sure if we can do this, as it is unclear what is the
> license of the PROV ontologies and schemas.
> 
> They do not have any <!-- style --> headers, and there is no
> dcterms:license annotatoin.
> 
> However
> 
> https://www.w3.org/ns/prov/
> and
> https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/
> 
> says:
> 
>> Copyright © 2011-2013 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio, Beihang), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark and document use rules apply.
> 
> The Document Use Rules
> https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2015/doc-license
> are controversial for Apache source code as it forbids modifications:
> 
>> No right to create modifications or derivatives of W3C documents is granted pursuant to this license, except as follows: To facilitate implementation of the technical specifications set forth in this document, anyone may prepare and distribute derivative works and portions of this document in software, in supporting materials accompanying software, and in documentation of software, PROVIDED that all such works include the notice below. HOWEVER, the publication of derivative works of this document for use as a technical specification is expressly prohibited.
> 
> ..and hence we can't include them in source code
> repositories/releases, as it would be incompatible with the Apache
> License.
> 
> (including in binaries are OK, but then we have to fetch them during
> build - which risks hitting the infamous w3.org schema 'tar pit')
> 
> 
> However the Document Use rules also says:
> 
>> In addition, "Code Components" —Web IDL in sections clearly marked as Web IDL; and W3C-defined markup (HTML, CSS, etc.) and computer programming language code clearly marked as code examples— are licensed under the W3C Software License.
> 
> ( The W3C Software License is permissive and would be OK to include in
> source code.
> https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2015/copyright-software-and-document )
> 
> 
> This list does not include schemas, ontologies or JSON-LD contextx -
> so it is unclear if these count as "Code Components" or as
> "Documents".  Do we then have to assume that if they don't have a
> header or license annotation, then they are under the Documentation
> License?
> 
> 
> BTW - here's an example of a schema with the software licence header,
> which means we can include it in source code:
> 
> https://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/xmldsig-core-schema.xsd
> 
> (once you get it out of the w3.org tar pit)
> 
> <!-- Schema for XML Signatures
>    http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#
>    $Revision: 1.1 $ on $Date: 2002/02/08 20:32:26 $ by $Author: reagle $
> 
>    Copyright 2001 The Internet Society and W3C (Massachusetts Institute
>    of Technology, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en
>    Automatique, Keio University). All Rights Reserved.
>    http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/
> 
>    This document is governed by the W3C Software License [1] as described
>    in the FAQ [2].
> 
>    [1] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-software-19980720
>    [2] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/IPR-FAQ-20000620.html#DTD
> -->
> 
> 
> Would it be possible for other schemas and ontologies, particularly
> under /ns/ to get a similar clarifying license header? Or at least
> this to be a requirement for any future specifications?
> 
> 
> Another question is what counts as a "modification" - is this any
> derived work? E.g. changing a Turtle file to JSON-LD? Or generating
> Java class files with JAXB from an XSD?
> 
> 
> We're considering a legal workaround by packaging various w3c schemas
> as Maven artifacts, from Github distributed to Maven Central as JAR
> "binaries" - but it is even unclear if this would count as a
> "modification".
> 
> (We have a similar issue with OASIS schemas)
> 
> --
> Stian Soiland-Reyes, eScience Lab
> School of Computer Science
> The University of Manchester
> http://soiland-reyes.com/stian/work/    http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718
> 

--
Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>      http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                       +1 718 260 9447