Re: What is Process Good For? licensing

> On Dec 16, 2014, at 11:49 , Wendy Seltzer <wseltzer@w3.org> wrote:
> 
> On 12/16/2014 02:29 PM, Michael Champion (MS OPEN TECH) wrote:
>>> I believe we have that in the W3C Software License, a BSD variant that's already recognized as OSI Open Source and GPL-compatible.
>> Is that appropriate for specs (as opposed to code) being incubated in GitHub/a Community Group? I think we want to keep this as simple as possible.
>> 
> 
> The Software License refers to "software and documentation," but could
> also be applied to any type of text.
> 
> It grants "Permission to copy, modify, and distribute this software and
> its documentation, with or without modification, for any purpose and
> without fee or royalty" provided you give notice of the license, include
> any disclaimers, and give notice of modifications.
> 
> If those are the properties desired in a license, then the Software
> License seems a fine one to use.

I actually looked at how much tweaking the software license would need to have it clearly be a document license, and the answer is not much.

> 
> --Wendy
> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Wendy Seltzer [mailto:wseltzer@w3.org] 
>> Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2014 11:21 AM
>> To: David Singer; public-w3process
>> Subject: Re: What is Process Good For? licensing
>> 
>> On 12/16/2014 02:13 PM, David Singer wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Dec 16, 2014, at 9:18 , Wayne Carr <wayne.carr@linux.intel.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> What's wrong with something like the BSD license?  or asking Creative Commons to create a simple document license that is compatible with GPL (and other popular software licenses) and that requires things like preserving copyright notices and disclaimers?
>>> 
>>> It would be good to have a simple ‘please attribute but otherwise do as you will” text (copyright) license in existence that does not have the problems of cc-by.  ideally it already exists and we avoid license proliferation.
>> 
>> I believe we have that in the W3C Software License, a BSD variant that's already recognized as OSI Open Source and GPL-compatible.
>> 
>> http://opensource.org/licenses/W3C
>> 
>> We're aiming to take a first step toward more liberal licensing with the proposal, currently before the AC, to offer Code Components under the Software License:
>> 
>> http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2014/doc-license.html
>> 
>> --Wendy
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Wendy Seltzer -- wseltzer@w3.org +1.617.715.4883 (office) Policy Counsel and Domain Lead, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
>> http://wendy.seltzer.org/        +1.617.863.0613 (mobile)
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Wendy Seltzer -- wseltzer@w3.org +1.617.715.4883 (office)
> Policy Counsel and Domain Lead, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
> http://wendy.seltzer.org/        +1.617.863.0613 (mobile)

David Singer
Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Tuesday, 16 December 2014 20:37:37 UTC