On 9 Jun 2010, at 16:35, Shelley Powers wrote:
[snip]
Frankly, though, I don't think that Apple, Opera, or Mozilla have
legally made an assertion of copyright ownership of the HTML5 spec.
They don't have to. Copyright is assigned at the moment of creation
and it almost certainly falls under work for hire rules.
Plus, as Anne pointed out:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/0429.html
This is just a group of folks who worked for these companies at the
time, signing their names to a document. As far as I know, there's
never been a legal agreement between Apple, Opera, and Mozilla
about this copyright ownership.
In the most severe case, I think, copyright would devolve to Opera
and Google as the employers of Ian. They almost certainly own the
bits that Ian wrote while employed by each company.
I wouldn't stress the "just a group of people" aspect. It's pretty
clear that all three orgs are pretty HTML5 gung ho at the moment (see
Apple). It matters less the whether decisions at the time were made
at high levels with lawyers and more what the actual legal facts are.
FWIW, I think it's fine. Everyone can use the specs. Everyone can
pretty reasonably safely implement them or derive new specs from
them. I don't see that changing.
There has been, though, legal agreements between these companies
and the entities that back the W3C.
Which only forces a licensing, afaict. But the licensing is sufficient.
The point is moot, though, since all of the organizations can
implement the work, and duplicate the documents.
Yep.
The only time legalities really enter the picture is in regards to
the any assertions of patent ownership, and the W3C has a patent
policy that protects member organizations if they implement any
piece of HTML5.
[snip]
Actually, I believe it protects everyone insofar as it protects anyone.
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#def-RF
"""With respect to a Recommendation developed under this policy, a
W3C Royalty-Free license shall mean a non-assignable, non-
sublicensable license to make, have made, use, sell, have sold, offer
to sell, import, and distribute and dispose of implementations of the
Recommendation that:
1. shall be available to all, worldwide, whether or not they are W3C
Members;"""
Cheers,
Bijan.
