[whatwg] Web Forms 2.0 and the W3C Patent Policy

* Matthew Raymond wrote:
>   The following individuals may or may not have agreed to the W3C
>Patent Policy regarding the Web Forms 2.0 specification:

>   If your name is on the list above, please agree to the license so we
>can circumvent the patent policy issue in the HTML WG. Let me know if
>you've already agreed to the policy so I can take you off the list.

Individuals and Organizations who are not W3C Members and do not par-
ticipate in the HTML Working Group can make licensing commitments at
any time by following the steps outlined at:

  * http://www.w3.org/2004/01/pp-impl/40318/nmlc (HTML WG)
  * http://www.w3.org/2004/01/pp-impl/38483/nmlc (WAF WG)
  * ...

I do not know whether any why any specific action on part of the many
individuals you've mentioned may be required here, but I should note
that W3C has staff to deal with legal issues and they should take any
necessary action.

As for my personal contributions to the "Web Forms 2.0" W3C Working
Draft dated 21 August 2006, I do not believe they are substantially
different in nature to those I've made to dozens of other Technical
Reports.

If W3C intends to make it mandatory to agree to the license and/or
disclosure terms of the current W3C Patent Policy, especially if by
requiring contributors to join the individual Working Groups, or by
constantly mailing forms around, in order to make minor contributions,
the time, work, and cost for professional legal advice required would
prohibit me and many others from contributing to most W3C activities.

It would be considerably more reasonable to follow the model of other
organizations and limit the scope of such terms to the contributions
actually made by contributors. If W3C is to provide reasonable methods
for doing so, it should be feasible to formally agree to royality-free
licensing terms for the specific contributions I have made. I have no
interest however in doing what amounts to joining 50 Working Groups.
-- 
Bj?rn H?hrmann ? mailto:bjoern at hoehrmann.de ? http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Weinh. Str. 22 ? Telefon: +49(0)621/4309674 ? http://www.bjoernsworld.de
68309 Mannheim ? PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 ? http://www.websitedev.de/

Received on Thursday, 15 March 2007 09:24:44 UTC