- From: Joseph Reagle <reagle@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 09:05:56 -0500
- To: "Kirill Gavrylyuk" <kirillg@microsoft.com>
- Cc: <www-qa-wg@w3.org>
On Wednesday 19 February 2003 21:23, Kirill Gavrylyuk wrote: > So essentially the new Document License does not allow "to use" the > materials published under it. Which means one cannot even read the > materials, let alone use them to design implementations. Hi Kirill, It is not a typo but was purposefully removed. In short, our software and document licenses permit certain actions (e.g., copying/distribution and adaption) that are exclusively reserved to the W3C (and otherwise denied to others) via copyright law. "Use" is not such a reserved right. I noted a discussion on a licensing discussion list about this and put the question to our counsel. They confirmed that because "use" is not an exclusive enumerated right and ambiguous in this context it is best removed -- and that they were orthogonally cleaning this issue up in other documents as well. Consequently, if you have a book (of W3C specifications) copyright law restricts you from doing certain things to it, such as making a copy or adaption. Copyright law does not prevent you, and consequently no explicit grant is needed, from reading it, implementing it, or "using" it as a coaster, or to raise your monitor. Furthermore, via "fair use" there are exceptions to the owners exclusive rights that permits someone to even, in limited contexts, make copies (e.g., a backup), adaptions (e.g., scribbling in the margins), etc. If someone downloads a test suite under a document license but needs to do some local/personal transform on the bindings to apply them, one might consider that fair use. If the recipient of that work requires a more definitive/explicit grant, we could further clarify that in the FAQ (e.g., being clear it is fair use[1], or making an additional grant of adaption for that circumstance [2]). Or, if there is a compelling set of reasons it could be addressed with a test suite license. [1] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/IPR-FAQ-20000620#writer [2] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/IPR-FAQ-20000620#annotate
Received on Thursday, 20 February 2003 09:05:59 UTC