No policy? Re: Is EME usable regardless of the software/hardware I use ?

Jeff Jaffe:
> On 6/5/2013 10:57 AM, piranna@gmail.com wrote:
> I've been trying to establish the following points in this discussion.
> 
> 1. Today there are no W3C policies which would forbid EME from
> consideration.
> 2. I accept the fact that one could want such policies.  They could be
> proposed and even accepted in time.  But, simply, these would be new
> policies.

I do not necessarily agree. A policy can be explicitly stated in a
formal document but alternatively can exist because it is followed in
practice without such a document being written first.

Three days ago you stated:

"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."

That does sound like an informal policy.

"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."

It is noteworthy that:

1. such an explicit policy would not (as far as I know) contradict *any*
W3C Recommendation which has been published so far.

2. a policy which allows a Recommendation which is incompatible with one
of the main Open Source licenses (GPL3) would contradict the informal
existing policy expressed in a practice which has been "followed
assiduously for several years".

> 3. In terms of freedom to access content without EME - there are
> competing principles (cf blog post).  I don't denigrate the principled
> arguments that content should be "free" in a FOSS sense. But there are
> principles on the other side as well, that we are balancing when we say
> that we can include EME in the Open Web Platform, but not a proprietary
> CDM.

Most of the discussion so far has not been about "freedom to access
content without EME". The issue we discussed is that EME in practice
prevents the implementation using the GPL3 and therefore is not an Open
Standard.

Nobody seems to present the view here that CDMs should be considered
part of the Open Web Platform. But the essential components of the pair
(EME, CDMs) are the CDMs and not EME.

I have not seen a single "principle" which is competing with the
fundamental and defining requirement of an Open Standard of the Open Web
Platform to be Open.

Cheers,
Andreas

Received on Thursday, 6 June 2013 20:18:14 UTC