[whatwg] Copyright of specifications

[Jim Ley]

On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 12:26:55 +0000 (UTC), Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Aug 2004, Jim Ley wrote:
> > So that has changed from the previous situation where you made it very
> > clear you were doing this as an individual.
> 
> You are mixing two things. First, WHATWG only recognises individuals, not
> companies.

Could you explain what this means? 

> Requesting an "urgent reply" for something like this would only serve to
> reduce my credibility within the company.

but it's clear from this mailing list that this is an issue that the
WHAT-WG wants resolved (it's not just me who's asked about it)  So I
see no reason why it should, you're just the spokesman here.

> You still haven't replied to my request for an explanation of an example
> of how Opera could ever get to the stage where it would be in Opera's
> interests to revoke the license.

A derivative work that defined Opera's implementation as
non-conformant, resulting.

> You also haven't replied to my question about what it is you wanted
> permission for

Me,  I don't want permission to do anything right now, I just wanted
clarification of why a WHAT-WG specification is copyright a single
vendor, because I believe that limits the options of what could be
done - I don't want an open licence etc. I want it to be owned by
someone, I just don't want that someone to be a public company - I'd
much rather it was copyright Ian Hickson as an individual because I
believe that to be more trustworty than a company that could be bought
at any time.

Of course so could you,  but I believe that risk is less.

The reason I supported the placing of it in the PD was that subsequent
work could then be copyright the WHAT-WG, not because I wanted it to
be forever Public Domain.

Jim.