Re: proposed Test Materials license

On Thursday 09 January 2003 21:00, Kirill Gavrylyuk wrote:
> 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.

Hi Kirill, thank you for your response and I think I do understand your 
position, "Microsoft recommends its employees to not use the Test Materials 
published under the W3C Software License", but not yet the rationale. I 
think this is in two parts:

WARRANTIES and LIABILITY

> ...
> remaining issues blocking vendors like Microsoft to contribute to test
> suites for certain standards where Document License is not applicable.
> ... 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.

The W3C Software License has text limiting representations, warranties, and 
liability, etc.:
  http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231
It's standard terminology and it's nearly identical to the the text proposed 
in the draft Test License.
  http://www.w3.org/QA/WG/2002/11/W3CTestLicenseDRAFT.html


LIMITATION OF SCOPE

> Details/Rationale:
>
> 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. 

I *think* this is the core of your concern that I'd like to understand 
better. In this thread we've already discussed whether the Software 
Licenses permission of derivative works would lead to deceitful 
modifications such that claims of "W3C conformance" can be illegitimately 
made. I've yet to see this happen -- and if it did trademark abuse and 
public pillory are readily available remedies. Beyond that issue, I'm 
unclear of the requirements and concerned the proposed QA text that 
addresses those requirements such as not permitting incorporation in 
software (e.g., a Member can't include a W3C test suite in their software 
for regression testing?) and distribution (e.g., we've never tried to limit 
redistribution so, again, a Member can't include it in software, nor that 
someone can't mirror portions of our site that have these tests?).

Received on Monday, 13 January 2003 12:39:11 UTC