- From: Philippe Le Hegaret <plh@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2012 09:55:54 -0400
- To: Anne van Kesteren <annevk@annevk.nl>
- Cc: www-archive <www-archive@w3.org>, Wendy Seltzer <wseltzer@w3.org>, Rigo Wenning <rigo@w3.org>, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org>
Hi Anne, Thank you for your continued interest in this topic and for your stimulating thoughts on how to improve W3C. Here is the current status on the Document license front: We conducted a poll of the W3C Members last year regarding the W3C Document license. The poll was proposing 3 different licenses worked within the PSIG [1]. The proposal were addressing 9 of the 11 use cases from the HTML Working Group, while addressing concerns raised with the Advisory Committee with regards to the forking use cases. Some of those options had limited forking available. All 3 options ended up being rejected by the HTML Working Group [2]. As indicating during the HTML face-to-face meeting last year [3], we indicated that, despite being on the record as supporting a permissive license, the W3C Members told us by an overwhelming majority (80%) is that, when you are on the W3C Rec-track, they feel that the specifications must not be forkable. As part of the overall of the W3C Process document, the Advisory Board looked at this question at our request and the Advisory Board felt that the W3C Membership had not changed their position since 2011, so it wouldn't make any sense for us to ask the same question again. We can certainly outline to them the impact on the Open Web Platform when individuals like you, who contributes significantly to the Web, are unwilling to participate due to the terms of the W3C Document license. We cannot force them however to change their position against their will unfortunately. We certainly understand and respect your opinion about the copyright issue. Nonetheless, we would still be very disappointed if this results in your not participating as an IE. We will certainly continue to look for a common ground between the various communities. As a reminder, we created Community Groups, open forums without fees, with a more open license (the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA) [4])). It enables anyone to socialize their ideas for the Web at the W3C for possible future standardization. Regards, Philippe [1] http://www.w3.org/2011/03/html-license-options.html [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011May/0121.html [3] http://www.w3.org/2011/11/04-html-wg-minutes.html#item01 [4] http://www.w3.org/community/about/agreements/cla/
Received on Friday, 28 September 2012 13:56:08 UTC