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Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2013 02:07:24 +0000 (UTC)
From: "Lawrence Rosen (JIRA)" <jira@apache.org>
To: legal-discuss@apache.org
Message-ID: <JIRA.12671610.1380644655180.15266.1380679644088@arcas>
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Subject: [jira] [Commented] (LEGAL-179) Include CC-BY as an Apache-approved
 third party license
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    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-179?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13783578#comment-13783578 ] 

Lawrence Rosen commented on LEGAL-179:
--------------------------------------

Responding to questions by Henri Yandell:

HY: Given the CC organization don't recommend CC licenses for software, will the W3C be choosing a different license for reference implementations and snippets of code found within the specification?

LR: The CC-BY license is for a specification, not software directly. (You don't execute an HTML specification on a computer, at least not at the current stage of the art of specification writing.)  CC-BY will be the license for the entire W3C Specification. That includes various kinds of copyrightable works that it contains, including snippets of code. No other license will be used for that code.

HY: If it won't be covering software or snippets, it seems there are two ways in which we would care about a specification's license; when quoting the specification and when implementing the specification.

LR: It /will/ be covering "software or snippets" within the Specification. Yes, we will care "when quoting the specification and when implementing the specification."

HY: In both cases, what would a derived work be? Would an implementation be "a work based upon the Work"?

LR: Please refer that question to your own attorney for any software you intend to distribute. I have argued publicly that implementations of a specification such as HTML could very well be a derivative work, but other attorneys disagree based on their reading of imprecise copyright law. But as for software implementations specifically created by Apache (about which we Apache members care), my assumption is that /our/ inclusion of CC-BY among the Apache-approved third party licenses would require us to include appropriate notices in our NOTICE files. Other Apache attorneys are invited to comment on the need for such notices, but please remember that we must satisfy whatever attribution conditions the CC-BY license imposes if we implement HTML in the future.

HY: If so, would that mean having to clearly identify all changes that are not from the specification (and what would that mean, all code changes or all API changes or all .... ) [3b].

LR: I don't read the CC-BY license in such an onerous way. It is important, however, for users to know whether the software that Apache distributes implements the full W3C specification. As the W3C Director said, W3C intends the CC-BY license to "support other important W3C and community aims, [such as preventing] confusion [and encouraging] interoperability of the Web platform,"  I believe those are also Apache's goals. The CC-BY license merely requires appropriate notices of the W3C specification.and not detailed documents describing its implementations or its derivative works.

HY: There's also a requirement that we have to remove a credited individual at their request. So let's say Apache HTTPD refers to this, then 10 years later someone wants to commit infocide, they can require us to edit all of our old versions of httpd.tar.gz to remove their name. [4a].

LR: Again, I believe you're over-analyzing this provision. Nobody will care 10 years from now what specifications our old implementations of Apache HTTPD refer to, and we'll certainly have no obligation ourselves to reconstruct or correct that history. OTOH, if we stop implementing W3C's HTML, then I presume our new versions would have to revise those newer NOTICE files.

Hope that clarifies.  /Larry

> Include CC-BY as an Apache-approved third party license
> -------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: LEGAL-179
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-179
>             Project: Legal Discuss
>          Issue Type: Question
>            Reporter: Lawrence Rosen
>
> W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee has just approved the use of CC-BY as the license for the HTML Working Group and as an experiment to determine whether to use that license for other W3C specifications. Since Apache members participate in HTML development and use that W3C specification in our projects, we should add CC-BY to the Apache list of approved third-party licenses.
> /Larry
> ********** Here is what the W3C announcement said:
> "Based on extensive discussions, the Director has decided to pursue the experiment with CC-BY. The Director's view is that:
>    * Despite concerns from some developers that it is not sufficiently
>      liberal, CC-BY satisfies the key requirement of permitting the
>      creation of derivative works.
>    * A license with no attribution requirement, such as CC0, would
>      not support other important W3C and community aims, as it could
>      contribute to confusion rather than interoperability of the Web
>      platform.


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