Re: Copyright of the IDL Definitions

It seems fairly clear that the first "notice" refers to the documents on the
W3C site.  It is understandable that W3C would not authorize changes to the
documents posted on its site, since this would lead to confusion about the
official standard.

The second "notice" refers to the "software and documentation."  This is a
software implemenation of the W3C standard and the documentation to use the
implementation.  This does authorize modification, but only on the
conditions stated.

By the way, there is a technical difference between a "notice" and a
"license."  A "notice" is merely notice to the user that a claim of
copyright exists.  Under the Berne Convention, no "notice" is required to
secure copyright protection, although one is often used in some circles.
Under the recent WIPO Copyright Treaty, a "notice" now becomes "rights
management information" whose unauthorized removal is actionable in itself.
A "license" is a contractual commitment, enforced by contract law in
addition to enforcement allowed under copyright law.  The W3C "Notice and
License" appears to be both a notice and a license.

Lorin Brennan

----- Original Message -----
From: Tobias Peters <tpeters@uni-oldenburg.de>
To: <www-dom@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2000 1:53 PM
Subject: Copyright of the IDL Definitions


> Here is a question about the copyright issues involved when creating a DOM
> implementation.
>
> The copyright notice
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1/copyright-notice.html forbids the
> creation of "modifications or derivatives". My perception is that the
> creation of a DOM implementation involves making a derivative work of the
> DOM API published in
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1/level-one-core.html or
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1/idl-definitions.html . These files
> are published under the mentioned copyright notice, so how can any legal
> DOM (level 1) implementation exist?
>
> Regarding DOM level 2, there is a distinction between the "document" and
> the "bindings", with the latter being published under a different license
> that permits modifications. The copyright notice
> http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2/copyright-notice.html explicitly mentions
> the "IDL binding", while the table of contents speeks of "Java Language
> Binding" and "ECMA Script Language Binding", but "IDL Definitions" instead
> of IDL binding. Are these "IDL Definitions" really meant by the term "IDL
> binding", and if they are, could this be made more clear in the level 2
> document?
>
> Thanks for your thoughts,
>
> Tobias
>
>

Received on Monday, 18 September 2000 20:34:18 UTC