[occi-wg] OCCI Editor Getting Started Guide (docs/README.txt)

[Andre Merzky]

Sam, 

thanks for that link, very interesting discussion indeed.

Best, Andre.


Quoting [Sam Johnston] (Mar 23 2010):
> Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:09:36 +0100
> Subject: Re: [occi-wg] OCCI Editor Getting Started Guide (docs/README.txt)
> From: Sam Johnston <samj at samj.net>
> To: Andre Merzky <andre at merzky.net>
> Cc: occi-wg at ogf.org, Steven Newhouse <s.newhouse at omii.ac.uk>, 
> 	Christopher Smith <csmith at platform.com>, 
> 	Richard Hughes-Jones <Richard.Hughes-Jones at dante.org.uk>
> 
>    I'm still mostly out of action but thought you'd appreciate [1]this:
> 
> Update on HTML 5 Document License
> 
>    Today at the W3C Advisory Committee meeting, we discussed the document
>    license for HTML 5. We discussed [2]use cases from the HTML Working
>    Group that call for a more open license than the current [3]W3C
>    Document License.
> 
>    The result of discussion among the Membership is that there is strong
>    support for:
>      * a license that allows the reuse of excerpts in software, software
>        documentation, test suites, and other scenarios;
>      * a license (or licenses) that are familiar to the open source
>        community;
>      * processes that encourage innovation and experimentation about Web
>        technology, so that work can be easily brought to W3C for
>        standardization;
>      * making the HTML Working Group a forum that is conducive to
>        participation by the community at large;
>      * ensuring that the HTML 5 specification remains valuable to the
>        entire Web community (see an [4]update from Philippe Le Hégaret on
>        HTML that he presented to the Membership).
> 
>    In short, there is strong support in the Membership (but not unanimity)
>    for all of the use cases cited by the HTML Working Group except forking
>    the specification. Several W3C Members do feel strongly that the
>    document license should allow forking, however.
> 
>    People at the meeting agreed that, in any case, copyright is not likely
>    to prevent fragmentation. Several points were made:
>      * people do not expect copyright to be instrumental to the successful
>        deployment of HTML 5. Quality and market relevance will determine
>        whether the W3C specification is successful.
>      * innovation and experimentation are valued at W3C. Jeff Jaffe, W3C's
>        new CEO, has already [5]blogged about the fact that W3C should
>        encourage participation from more developers as they are
>        significant drivers of innovation.
>      * W3C needs to continue to listen closely to the community's views on
>        technical direction, including strong[6]objections. Although it may
>        not always be possible to bridge certain cultural divides, W3C must
>        continue to encourage the expression of opposing views and treat
>        them with respect. For instance, Tim Berners-Lee's blog
>        on [7]reinventing HTML discusses how W3C needed to adjust its
>        course around HTML based on community input.
> 
>    We have work to do to find the right license to meet the stated goals:
>    to make it easy for people to reuse W3C specifications in almost all of
>    the scenarios people have expressed are important to them.
> 
>    We plan to work with the community on the details as we move forward.
>    More information can be found in my [8]slides from the meeting. We
>    welcome your feedback.
>    On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 4:56 PM, Andre Merzky <[9]andre at merzky.net>
>    wrote:
> 
>      Hi Sam, all,
>      ready to discuss licensing again? :-)
>      here is an update from OGF28: first, we heard rumours that you may
>      show up here - this would be great, not in the least so that we can
>      discuss the licensing thingie F2F.  Usually that is way more
>      productive than endless mailing threads like this one, isn't it :)
>      Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that we have been discussing the
>      issues from the recent email exchanges (and I hope sincerely that
>      these are the issues you are in fact concerned about) within the
>      GFSG.
>      So, there was some discussion to review the current IPR text, and to
>      clarify those passages which seem, in your reading, to hide the
>      fact/intent that using any amount of text from a GFD for
>      documentation and any other purpose is legally perfectly fine:
>       "...derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or
> 
>     assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
>     and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
> 
>       kind..."
>      We will be cross-checking with similar texts of other standards
>      bodies, in particular including IETF, which seem to recently have
>      updated their IPR texts as well, to remove some ambiguities.  The
>      OGF IPR was originally modeled after IETF's, and, IIRC, was
>      basically reproducing the OGF IPR word by word.
>      Further we have been discussing the point you raised that the state
>      of OGF documents would be frozen in the case of OGF's disappearance.
>      If this turns out to be a concern for the community, we will
>      consider adding a clause which would release the documents into the
>      public domain in the case of OGF's demise - we certainly don't want
>      to hold anybody back in continuing to work with OGF documents in
>      that case.
>      Both of the above changes however need to be evaluated, and need to
>      be approved by the OGF board.  While we don't think this is a
>      problem per se, this will need time to be changed.
>      The OGF IPR is designed as it is to fulfil three goals: (a) support
>      the production and consumption of standards, (b) ensure that OGF
>      documents (i.e.  documents released under OGF copyright) went
>      through the OGF document process, and (c) secure OGF against legal
>      litigations.  The board will need to make sure that in particular
>      (b) and (c) are not affected by the proposed changes.  If this
>      sounds overly bureaucratic to you: well, that is the way we work ;-)
>      Please let us know if changes along those lines would make you sleep
>      better :-D
>      FWIW: for the same reasons as above (a-c), we do actually require
>      that OGF documents are under full OGF copyright, and it does not
>      seem likely that a proposal for dual licensing would find much
>      support, if any.
>      Looking forward to see you in Munich!
>      Best, Andre.
-- 
Nothing is ever easy.