Re: Licence of validation icons?

For the record and further discussion (our policy expert answered the 
original message directly).
[and copying the QAIG list as it may be of interest there too]

On Monday, Feb 10, 2003, at 13:13 Asia/Tokyo, Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
> But what is the licence of those icons I get from your validators?
> Can I
> incorporate them to my WWW-pages that are under DSL or FDL or any other
> free documentation licence?

The icons use is explained at:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/logo-usage-20000308#html-validator

In particular, the icons are covered by:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/trademark-license-19990516

... which basically means that in this case use of the icon is free, 
copying and distributing os OK, modification is not allowed.

One thing, however, that is still vague, is the "claim" issue. The 
trademark policy has something about claims, but it doesn't really 
cover conformance claims, which the "valid foo" icons basically are. 
Conformance claims for documents are even more complicated than for e.g 
software implementations, as the claim may be valid when made, and 
"slip out" when the document changes.

There may be technical solutions (like serving different icons 
depending on actual validity), but the social (legal?) questions 
remain. We (validator) could try and imitate what WAI has done at:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG1-Conformance

Cheers.

-- 
Olivier

Received on Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:47:04 UTC