Re: PSA: Sam Ruby is co-Editor of URL spec

On 11/23/2014 09:51 AM, Jeff Jaffe wrote:
> [adding PLH]
>
> There may be several different issues that we should all try to clarify.
>
> 1. Byte-for-byte copies.  Sam's proposal envisions the use of
> byte-for-byte copies.  But he also states that these copies must meet
> the needs of W3C pubrules.  These might be in contradiction; I'll
> explain the contradiction and I'll explain how I interpreted Sam'e
> proposal.
>
> The contradiction is in the document license.  WHATWG publishes with
> CC-0 and OWFa, and W3C publishes with the W3C Document license and
> occasionally CC-BY.  How can it possibly be a byte-for-byte copy if some
> of the bytes (document license) are different?
>
> My interpretation of Sam's proposal was that he meant that the documents
> would be byte-for-byte copies with the exception of the document
> license.  Sam, is that a correct interpretation?

My original suggestion was byte-for-byte with the exception of links 
(e.g., stylesheet) and references.  I also invited everybody to suggest 
revisions or alternate proposals.

> 2. Contributions.  W3C requires that contributions come from
> participants of the Working Group so that we are on strong ground in
> declaring RF.  If there is text that is proposed from outside the WG, it
> is a responsibility of the Chair to make sure that we are not bringing
> in text that is encumbered by patents.
>
> In this proposal, I am assuming that the Chairs would need to fulfill
> that responsibility even for text coming in from the WHATWG.
>
> In the case of URL, with most/all of the text coming from Sam and Anne -
> both of whose companies are part of WebApps - this does not appear to be
> a large burden.

I agree that this isn't likely a problem.

> 3. Source of original document.  There are some documents that are
> currently under restrictive licenses such as the W3C Document License.
> The W3C community (specifically the Member organizations - the AC and
> AB) has not approved forkable licenses (with the exception of the
> limited CC-BY experiment).  This might be what Anne is referring to.  If
> you take some existing W3C document (e.g. TTML) which is only published
> under the W3C document license and use that as the source of a revision,
> Anne is correct that it is not trivial to make that available under a
> permissive license.
>
> To the best of my knowledge that is not an issue for URL because my
> understanding is that we are talking about a document that is not
> encumbered by a previous copyright restriction (to be sure I have not
> asked for a legal review).
>
> I think Anne is correct that it would be difficult to implement Sam's
> proposal for an existing document such as TTML.  From a legal point of
> view, W3C owns the copyright and has legal authority to make it
> available under a different license.  However, I doubt that W3C would
> feel comfortable doing that without the agreement of the AC/AB - and I
> would not be optimistic.

I don't think this is a problem.

> 4. Ongoing modifications.  Here is another potential issue.  Let's say
> that a major revision of the spec is done in W3C, and W3C publishes a
> new draft under a restrictive document license.  The next day, WHATWG
> wants to publish a copy.
>
> While arguably that could be a violation of W3C's Document license, I
> don't think it arises in Sam's proposal.  As I understand it, all
> modifications happen first in the WHATWG (with its permissive license)
> and are then copied into W3C.  So there is already a permissive license
> associated with any version of the document prior to its coming under
> restrictions of the W3C document license.

I don't think this is a problem.

What appears indeed to be a problem is the text in section 7b of the 
Member Agreement, and section 2.2 of the Invited Expert and Collaborator 
Agreement.  I've asked about this on the public-w3process list:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Nov/0156.html

> Jeff

- Sam Ruby

> On 11/23/2014 7:12 AM, Sam Ruby wrote:
>> cc += Jeff, Arnaud
>>
>> On 11/23/2014 04:05 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>>> On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 9:18 PM, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Would it be possible to fork https://github.com/whatwg/url into
>>>> https://github.com/w3c/, and to give me the necessary access to
>>>> update this?
>>>
>>> I'm not sure why this escaped me, but the reason this doesn't work,
>>> provided you want to continue to contribute to the WHATWG, is that the
>>> W3C prevents it. I was after this kind of setup in 2012, and Jeff and
>>> Wendy told me in no uncertain terms that it was in violation of the
>>> Member Agreement. I then became a non-Member, but the Invited Expert
>>> and Collaborator Agreement prevents the same thing.
>>>
>>> So if we are to go through with this, I would need to something in
>>> writing from the W3C and IBM (the actual Member Agreements are private
>>> and may have differences per company as I understand it) that this is
>>> in fact okay.
>>
>> I believe that there must have been a miscommunication; especially
>> given that Jeff has indicated[1][2] that he doesn't see any changes to
>> the W3C process required to implement what I plan to do[3].
>>
>> Just to be clear, I've been doing my work on my own machine. Nobody
>> seems to have a problem with that.  I push it to my site
>> (intertwingly.net under CC0).  Nobody has a problem with that.  I push
>> it to github under my name.  Nobody has a problem with that.
>>
>> The W3C is willing to consider the contribution.  The W3C has
>> different ideas on licensing which I'm not thrilled with, but can live
>> with.
>>
>> Michael Champion has proposed that we establish a separate
>> repository[4] for shared work.  Nobody has a problem with that.
>>
>> Hopefully this miscommunication can be resolved before my rewriting of
>> the parser work[5] is complete.
>>
>> - Sam Ruby
>>
>> [1]
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Nov/0148.html
>> [2]
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Nov/0155.html
>> [3] http://intertwingly.net/blog/2014/11/20/WHATWG-W3C-Collaboration
>> [4]
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Nov/0149.html
>> [5] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=25946
>

Received on Sunday, 23 November 2014 15:15:07 UTC