Re: Invited Expert Agreement

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