RE: proposed Test Materials license

Hi Joseph,
Sorry for delay with an answer. Here are some of the reasons why
Microsoft cannot use materials published under the W3C Software License
and cannot contribute materials to be published under the W3C Software
License. Hope this clarifies our position. We really hope that the W3C
would be able to put the process in place that would resolve these
remaining issues blocking vendors like Microsoft to contribute to test
suites for certain standards where Document License is not applicable.


An essence of the problem that using the W3C Software license for
publishing Test Materials causes for Microsoft:
Microsoft contributes test materials for standards-related test
development efforts under licenses that provide certain warranties and
limitations of the scope. Microsoft uses only test materials published
under licenses with similar warranties/limitations of the scope. The W3C
Software License does not provide such warranties or any limitations of
the scope, which is incompatible with the license Microsoft uses and
makes it impossible for Microsoft to use the materials published under
the W3C Software License.

Details/Rationale:

1) Microsoft recommends its employees to not use the Test Materials
published under the W3C Software License. As a general policy Microsoft
does not use code produced without certain warranties or reps that might
impact our use of the code.  The W3C Software License does not provide
warranties or reps against copyright infringement, trade secret
misappropriation, or imposition of further obligations relating to the
use of the Test Materials.

2) Microsoft cannot contribute materials to be published under the W3C
Software License. Currently we request the use of the W3C Document
License for publishing our submissions, but in the future it may not be
applicable for some standards where limited modifications of the
materials are required. When Microsoft produces test materials, it
intends them to be used for a particular purpose, but the W3C Software
license allows the materials licensed under it to be modified in any
manner inconsistent with Microsoft's intent. Because of this and the
lack of warranties provided by the W3C Software License mentioned in the
item 1), we simply cannot accurately evaluate the risks of contributing
the test Materials to a W3C test suite published under the W3C Software
License. And the benefits for Microsoft of contributing the test
Materials to such a test suite would be minimal since Microsoft would
not be able to use such a test suite because of the item 1).

Thanks


-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Reagle [mailto:reagle@w3.org] 
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 11:42 AM
To: Kirill Gavrylyuk
Cc: www-qa-wg@w3.org; Karin Rivard; Marija V. Jankovich; Philippe Le
Hegaret
Subject: Re: proposed Test Materials license

On Thursday 14 November 2002 01:15 am, Kirill Gavrylyuk wrote:
> 1. When the Document License does not work for publishing test
> Materials? An example would be any downloadable test materials package
> that would require modification (even just platform/implementation
> adjustments) in order to be used for a product testing.
> 	An existing example is a W3C DOM test suite, which is published
> under the modified W3C Software License and cannot be published under
> Document License.

Yes, the DOM Test  Suite has been successfully built and distributed
under 
the W3C Software License -- as has the XML Test Suite. If necessary, the

ability to alter the test suite (e.g., build language specific bindings)
is 
a reason to choose the Software License, but folks might want to permit 
maximum flexibility (e.g., the XML Test Suite are just instances and
don't 
require any modifications for use I don't think.)

> 2. Why the Software License does not work for Test Materials? Using
GPL
> compatible licenses like the W3C Software License for test materials
> without restricting the scope of use
> -	limits availability of the published test materials for certain
> vendors
> -	prevents certain potential contributors from submitting test
> materials to the W3C test suite.

This is what I'm trying to understand. How does it limit availability
and 
prevent contributions?

Received on Thursday, 9 January 2003 21:00:50 UTC