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

On 6/6/2013 4:17 PM, Andreas Kuckartz wrote:
> 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.

This appears to be a difference without a distinction.

Let me introduce another term - Guideline.  Guidelines guide our work.

I said that we have "more authoritative" guidelines called policies and 
"less authoritative" guidelines which I called practices.

You seem to agree that we have both "more authoritative" and "less 
authoritative" guidelines, but you prefer to name the latter - informal 
policies.  Fine.  You can call it whatever you prefer.  I don't think it 
makes a difference.

>
> "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".

The key point is "what has been the intention" of the practice. I've 
spoken to various people who've been at W3C much longer than I, and I'm 
told that when the practice was established to be compatible with open 
source, it was not an intention that W3C Recommendations must be 
implementable with every open source license.

You could have similarly argued that we have had a policy "not to allow 
requirements like the content protection requirements of the Web and TV 
Interest Group" - after all, such a policy would not contradict any W3C 
Recommendation which has been published so far. But that too would be a 
policy with no intention behind it - it was simply never discussed.  
Evidently, when the Director ruled those requirements "in-scope" he 
implicitly determined that it did not violate any such unstated policy.

>
>> 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 23:01:57 UTC