On 11/24/2014 4:52 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 3:51 PM, Jeff Jaffe <[email protected]> wrote:
This might be what Anne is referring to.
No. I'm interested in the hypothetical we discussed during that
meeting. That the moment a non-W3C document enters W3C space, it can
no longer be developed outside the W3C. Even though copyright-wise
this would be okay, it would not be legal due to the W3C Member
Agreement and W3C Invited Expert and Collaborator Agreement.
As it relates to Sam's specific proposal, my understanding is the
following distinction - which would require legal review.
I believe that there is a concept of a consortium product - that is to
say a specification that Members worked on together in a Working Group.
When Members work together on such a product they are agreeing to
advance the product in W3C.
As I understand Sam's proposal, each enhancement of the spec is done
outside of the Working Group. So the WG never comes together to advance
the specification. Instead, the work is done outside; and by agreement
it is brought into the W3C after it has been completed.
And I specifically brought up HTML as it used to have such an
arrangement, but you said that was a special case agreed among several
Members and the W3C and could not be used for any documents.
If the W3C community agrees to be more liberal than the current guidance
we can always make changes. For example, the CC-BY experiment is a
change we made.
To the extent that Sam's proposal does not run afoul of existing
agreements (my interpretation - but requires legal review as per
elsewhere on the thread), we would need no additional consultation with
the Membership.
If it did run afoul of existing agreements, we could still do it - but
might need consultation with the Membership.
Some items that have recently been discussed with the AC or AB which
seemed not acceptable include a CC-0 license, and a subtitle related to
government officials and patent lawyers. More modest changes (such as
the CC-BY example) have been made.
