Re: DOM, Promises, and licensing

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 3:39 PM, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:

> On 7/15/2013 7:04 AM, Robin Berjon wrote:
>
>> Hi Chris,
>>
>> thanks for your level-headed and helpful analysis.
>>
>> On 12/07/2013 22:50 , Chris Wilson wrote:
>>
>>> The Document License, on the other hand, can only seek to protect itself
>>> from derivative works being made from the cloth of the document in
>>> question: so, if Anne were to take a W3C spec that is under the document
>>> license and replicate it, of course that would be prohibited. However,
>>> were he to make contributions to a spec under the Document License AND
>>> to a non-W3C spec (or even a W3C spec not under such a license), I don't
>>> believe the DL by itself can prohibit such contributions.
>>>
>>
>> That is my reading as well. I believe that it does leave one issue open
>> however: if a contribution comes in on the "W3C side" (in itself a rather
>> ill-defined idea, but let's say on a W3C mailing list or during a meeting),
>> under what rules does it fall? Is Anne (or whoever) allowed to integrate it
>> first into a non-W3C document?
>>
>> In practice I don't believe that it's a huge problem, but it does
>> maintain just the sort of uncertainty that can be a source of worry. That's
>> reinforced by the fact that some prominent W3C members remain strongly
>> opposed to forking licenses (IMHO very much against their best interests,
>> but that's another topic).
>>
>>  In short - I think the Invited Expert Agreement should be revised, but I
>>> believe Anne should not be afraid of running afoul of the IEA in this
>>> case, since he's not agreeing to it (as an employee of a Member);
>>>
>>
>> Much agreed.
>>
>>  At any rate, of course, the statement "...I personally would not want to
>>> edit anything that cannot be forked" would likely keep Anne from wanting
>>> to contribute to the W3C DOM spec anyway, at this point, so I suspect
>>> this may be academic.
>>>
>>
>> I don't think that it is, because it points at a potential solution. A
>> healthy web requires standards that are produced efficiently, by qualified
>> people, in a royalty-free manner. If that requires some form of WHATWG-W3C
>> cooperation — and it is clear that it does — then we are behooved to make
>> it happen. Given the HTML WG licensing experiment becomes a reality, we
>> will have a way forward. Imperfect for sure, but pointing in the right
>> direction.
>>
>> So to bring this all back on topic for this list, maybe the TAG should
>> issue a short position statement indicating how open licensing is core to
>> the web's values and essential to its continued development.
>>
>
> The scope statement of the TAG is:
>
> "The TAG's scope is limited to technical issues about Web architecture.
> The TAG should not consider administrative, process, or organizational
> policy issues of W3C, which are generally addressed by the W3C Advisory
> Committee, Advisory Board, and Team."
>
> If the TAG wishes to comment on open licensing (which imho is not a
> technical issue about Web architecture) I recommend that it first request
> the Director to expand its charter scope.


Happy to have the AB take this on instead, assuming of course that we can
follow/participate in the debate.


>
>> You never know, it might win over the last of the irredentist.
>>
>>
>
>