Re: org/w3c/dom duplicates in lib-dom-java and lib-openxml-java,libxerces-java!

[andrew@pimlott.ne.mediaone.net (Andrew Pimlott)]

On Wed, May 30, 2001 at 03:25:09PM +0100, Toby Speight wrote:
> AIUI, the packages in question simply bundle W3C's interfaces[1]
> (unchanged - W3C's licence may require this)

I was curious about this, and I would like to ask if there is any
consensus on how this affects free software.  For example, the
copyright notice at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Core-20001113/copyright-notice.html
says

    Consequently, modified versions of the DOM bindings must
    document that they do not conform to the W3C standard; in the
    case of the IDL definitions, the pragma prefix can no longer be
    'w3c.org'; in the case of the Java Language binding, the package
    names can no longer be in the 'org.w3c' package.

While this does allow modification of the software, it effectively
says that when you modify it, you must break the API.  This seems
like an onerous requirement.

Does anyone have any thoughts?  Can anyone make a good case for why
the DOM classes are still free software?

Please note that I am not making an accusation.

Andrew