Re: CfC: publish WD of XHR; deadline November 29

On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 12:38 PM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Nov 2012, David Bruant wrote:
>>
>> The intent is clear: the WHATWG publishes documents in the public domain
>> for very good reason. Anyone (W3C included!) can reuse them under close
>> to no condition, not even credit.
>
> I can speak pretty authoritatively to the intent, if that's what you are
> interested in.
>
> The relevant philosophy in the WHATWG context is multi-pronged:
>
> 1: Specs should be reusable in software, documentation, tutorials, and the
> like, without any barrier, whether free software or proprietary software,
> whether in books printed for money or FAQs that are themselves free to
> copy, whether in online courses with $10,000 entry fees or demos on
> street corners that are organised by marketing departments.
>
> 2: A spec author can "go bad" without realising it, so it should be
> possible to fork a specification if that happens, without the author
> having any control over this.
>
> 3: Forking specifications, publishing multiple copies of specifications,
> and publishing easy-to-find-with-a-search-engine snapshots of
> specifications, are all things that hurt interoperability by making
> implementors reference different requirements. The only time that forking
> a specification is justified is #2 above.
>
> We use open licenses on our specifications because of #1 and #2. We can't
> legally prevent #3 while allowing #1 and #2, so we rely on common sense
> and good faith to achieve #3.

I'm not sure in what capacity you are writing this. However I'll note
that not everyone at least at Mozilla agree with #3. I forget exactly
what policies govern WHATWG, but I don't know if the above can be
considered an official WHATWG policy.

/ Jonas

Received on Monday, 26 November 2012 01:11:54 UTC