W3C license
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Reason the license was written: The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards such as HTML, XML, and SOAP.
W3C’s long term goals are web for everyone, web on everything, knowledge base, and trust and confidence for creating one World Wide Web. The benefits of web are the ability of human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. 1. First, 'Web for everyone' means W3C makes these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability. 2. Second, W3C launched Mobile Web Initiative in 2005, so that it supports Web access from any kind of device as simple, easy and convenient as Web access from a desktop. 3. Third, by developing a Web that holds information for both human and machine processing, W3C aims to enable people to solve problems that would otherwise be too tedious or complex to solve.[1] 4. Last of all, as the web is more useful for people, the more trust and confidence of web is required. Therefore, W3C tries to promote technologies that enable a more collaborative environment providing accountability, security, confidence, and confidentiality. [1]
Compatibility with GPL: Software which is free from any claims beyond W3C terms and conditions are compatible with the GPL and may be redistributed under the GPL.[2] The GPL ensures users always have the ability to run, change, or redistribute software with or without changes; it also prevents such software from being bundled with closed/proprietary software such that users lose their rights to that free code in the new product. The W3C is compatible with this license and can be redistributed while complying with both the W3C and GPL software license! Additionally, the W3C license permits W3C code to be used in other (non-copyleft) licenses or even proprietary software.[3]
Derivative Works: Each member organization of W3C states the copyright of derivative works as follows:. Member Organization hereby grants to the W3C, a perpetual, nonexclusive, royalty-free, world-wide right and license under any Member Organization copyrights in this contribution to copy, publish and distribute the contribution under the W3C document licenses. Additionally, should the Submission be used as a contribution towards a W3C Activity, Member Organization grants a right and license of the same scope to any derivative works prepared by the W3C and based on, or incorporating all or part of, the contribution. Oracle Corporation further agrees that any derivative works of this contribution prepared by the W3C shall be solely owned by the W3C.[4] Member Organization can be Oracle Corporation, Arjuna Technologies Limited, Nokia Corporation, Sun Microsystems Inc., and etc. Therefore, the derivative work by those member organizations must be distributed the same license as W3C document licenses.
Covered Works: Distributing covered works accompanied by the source code is not required, because W3C only states the obligation about providing the copyright statement as follows: As documented, W3C software can be modified and redistributed provided that you comply with the terms of the Software, to summarize, you must provide any pre-existing notices or the short form of a copyright statement, the full text of the license in a location viewable to users of the work, notice of any changes to the work, and respect the trademarks of its originator. For resources distributed/obtained over the Internet, a link to the software license from the copyright declaration is considered to be a location available to users. In a few instances, software distributed by the W3C is provided by another entity under specific terms and conditions which must be followed. Please review any notices or disclosures that accompany the software itself. Documentation of the software is also under the software license, though actual specifications are not.[5]
Charging money for the programs under the license: Including the source code of W3C is not required. In addition, W3C permits to use, copy and distribute the W3C contents for any purpose and without fee or royalty [6] if it includes W3C’ copyright notice. For example, If there is someone who wants to use a W3C libraries and include it in their source code, or compile/link to it, the person must also include the copyright license.[7] However, there is no explicit mention about including source code, even W3C is compatible with GPL license.
Including a copy of the license: W3C provides the full W3C license text of copyright notice in order for users to include the text into their documents. Full description is as follows.[8] Public documents on the W3C site are provided by the copyright holders under the following license. By using and/or copying this document, or the W3C document from which this statement is linked, you (the licensee) agree that you have read, understood, and will comply with the following terms and conditions: Permission to copy, and distribute the contents of this document, or the W3C document from which this statement is linked, in any medium for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby granted, provided that you include the following on ALL copies of the document, or portions thereof, that you use: 1. A link or URL to the original W3C document. 2. The pre-existing copyright notice of the original author, or if it doesn't exist, a notice (hypertext is preferred, but a textual representation is permitted) of the form: "Copyright © [$date-of-document] World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved. [9]" 3. If it exists, the STATUS of the W3C document.
Adding to the license: W3C says that if additional requirements (documented in the Copyright FAQ) are satisfied, the right to create modifications or derivatives is sometimes granted by the W3C to individuals complying with those requirements.[10] W3C document copyright notice and license and W3C software copyright notice and license have the similar mention about adding additional requirements or restrictions.
Distribution under the license: It is also true for W3C license, because W3C permits to use, copy and distribute the W3C contents for any purpose and without fee or royalty [11] if it includes W3C’ copyright notice.
Later Versions: W3C copyright holders do not add “or any later version” to the distribution terms in their document. However, W3C says that the software license requires "Notice of any changes or modifications to the W3C files, including the date changes were made."[12] For example, 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.[13]
Other Relevant Aspects: There is an interesting mention about taking screenshot of W3C logo. W3c Provides the W3C’s log usage policy, so that W3C restricts taking screenshots to prevent from being used to circumvent W3C’s log usage policy. [14]
Reviewed by: Jihye Eom, Carnegie Mellon University
