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W30 DTD licensing (Re: copyright question concerning published DTDs)

I raised an issue with the W3O regarding DTD licensing.  I'm including
here my previous correspondance.  I have another followup in my next
message from the W30 and my response.

--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>
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Hello.  I have the responsibility of assessing the current copyright
of W3C DTDs accompanying your specifications, on behalf of the Debian
project <URL:http://www.debian.org/>.

As I read it, the DTDs are normative parts of the specifications in
most cases, and therefore part of the specification, and fall under
the Document Notice published at
<URL:http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-documents.html>.
Which is to say they don't fall under the more liberal software
license.

The Document Notice, as I read it, is clearly non-free from the Debian
Free Software Guidelines
<URL:http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines> or Open Source
Definition <URL:http://opensource.org/osd.html>.  I can cerntainly
understand why you need to control modification on standards.  Hence
we find these lines in the Notice:

  No right to create modifications or derivatives of W3C documents
  is granted pursuant to this license. 

This line makes it clear to me that DTDs which are derived from the
DTDs distributed with W3C specifications are illegal.

For instance, the Internet Explorer v3 DTD's, written by Mark Buckley
<mbuckley@microsoft.com>, and described at
<URL:http://www.microsoft.com/workshop/author/ie3html/ie3dtd.asp>, are
explicitly mentioned as derived from the Wilbur DTDs (HTML 3.2).  Am I
correct in surmising that Mark Buckley's distributed DTDs is a
licensing violoation?  This would be ironic since the said DTDs are
used and distributed from the W3C's own validator service
<URL:http://validator.w3.org/sgml-lib/>.

Am I also correct in assuming that the W3C probably has no intention
to disallow this sort of modification?  I would think that the W3C is
happy to allow derivative DTDs so long as they don't represent
themselves as W3C standards?  If so, would it be possible to get
clarification about the licensing and rights granted for DTDs?

.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>

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At 12:51 PM 3/22/99 -0500, Adam Di Carlo wrote:
 >Hello.  I have the responsibility of assessing the current copyright
 >of W3C DTDs accompanying your specifications, on behalf of the Debian
 >project <URL:http://www.debian.org/>.

Interesting question Adam!

 >I would think that the W3C is
 >happy to allow derivative DTDs so long as they don't represent
 >themselves as W3C standards?  If so, would it be possible to get
 >clarification about the licensing and rights granted for DTDs?

You are right with respect to our general approach. I suspect that as long
as the DOCTYPE is different from our own, and they attribute it as a work
derived from W3C, we'd give permission. Let me bounce this off a few folks
here, and I'll get you a definitive answer shortly. 

Can I ask what you plan on doing? Redistributing the DTD verbatim (which is
permitted regardless), or making modifications? Just curious.

___________________________________________________________
Joseph Reagle Jr.  W3C:     http://www.w3.org/People/Reagle/
Policy Analyst     Personal:  http://web.mit.edu/reagle/www/
                   mailto:reagle@w3.org

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
>>>>> "reagle" == Joseph M Reagle Jr (W3C) <reagle@w3.org> writes:

reagle> At 12:51 PM 3/22/99 -0500, Adam Di Carlo wrote:
>> I would think that the W3C is happy to allow derivative DTDs so
>> long as they don't represent themselves as W3C standards?  If so,
>> would it be possible to get clarification about the licensing and
>> rights granted for DTDs?

reagle> You are right with respect to our general approach. I suspect
reagle> that as long as the DOCTYPE is different from our own, and
reagle> they attribute it as a work derived from W3C, we'd give
reagle> permission. Let me bounce this off a few folks here, and I'll
reagle> get you a definitive answer shortly.

Yes -- just to restate my concern, this flexibility to
modify/redistribute so long as you aren't trying to pose as a
standard, is not currently reflected in the documentation license.

reagle> Can I ask what you plan on doing? Redistributing the DTD
reagle> verbatim (which is permitted regardless), or making
reagle> modifications? Just curious.

Well, the intention is redistribute verbatim.  However, there are some
minute changes that I make, i.e., file naming and location standards
for optimal integration.

Moreover, I don't want to distribute the MSIE DTDs if they are
illegal.

Finally, for the software to really be part of Debian, it has to meet
the definition of the Debian Free Software Guidelines
<URL:http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines> -- that is, it
has to allow modifications.  Restrictions such such that notices, FPI
changes, or other restrictions placed on the distribution of the
modified information is ok, however.

--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>

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