Re: What is the "open web" ?

On 6/5/2013 2:38 AM, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
>
>>>> Some would extend this to "Free Open Source Software".
>>> I am not sure how this is meant. The choice of Open Source licenses used
>>> by an Open Source implementation should not be restricted by a W3C
>>> recommendation directly or indirectly.
>> The distinction between FOSS and general open source licenses came up
>> several weeks ago on this mailing list.
>>
>> I don't believe that we've ever formulated a formal policy that W3C
>> Recommendations must be implementable in open source, but it is
>> certainly a practice that we have followed assiduously for several years
>> and continue to do so.
>>
>> While we have the practice of only providing Recommendations that are
>> implementable in open source, we haven't said that each Recommendation
>> must be implementable in every open source license that's out there.
>> Hence we've not said that every Recommendation must be implementable in
>> (e.g.) GPL.
> If you find that a specification is not implementable in GPL, it
> probably is not implementable in open source software at all.

I need further clarification.

EME, for example, might not be implementable in GPLv3.  But I wasn't 
aware that it was not implementable in other open source licenses such 
as Apache or MPL (or even GPLv2 for that matter).  What am I missing?

>
> It might be implementable in some software that is licensed under a
> license which is also used for some open source software but which
> unlike the GPL does not actually ensure that the software is open
> source software. For example, suppose I hold a patent and in addition
> I hold copyright on software code that implements the patent. I can
> grant a permissive copyright license to release control of my
> copyright but still enforce the patent. The resulting situation does
> not fulfill the definition of open source software.
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
> FreedomHTML.org

Received on Wednesday, 5 June 2013 07:57:29 UTC