[whatwg] Web Forms 2.0 and the W3C Patent Policy

[Charles McCathieNevile]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:28:12 -0700, L. David Baron <dbaron at dbaron.org> wrote:

> On Wednesday 2007-03-14 21:59 -0400, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>>    The following individuals may or may not have agreed to the W3C
>> Patent Policy regarding the Web Forms 2.0 specification:
> [...]
>>    If your name is on the list above, please agree to the license so we
>> can circumvent the patent policy issue in the HTML WG. Let me know if
>> you've already agreed to the policy so I can take you off the list.
>
> Sorry, what patent policy issue?  I've seen a lot of comments about
> patent policy flying around, but I haven't seen any concrete
> statement of an issue that exists.

I guess there is an issue that it is difficult for W3C to simply accept a specification without having any clear idea of the patent licensing agreement made by those who developed it (as a minimal exercise in protection from some unpleasant uses of patents). As David says, it isn't a license. But it has been helpful to have the policy active in the past.

Anyway, Opera in W3C abides by the W3C patent policy, and has already made the relevant commitment to the WAF group, which has already been working on WF2.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
  Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
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