w3c / w3c/process

Suboptimal wording about "License Grants from Non-Participants"

Open
#903 2 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Needs PSIG Feedback
Dominant language
HTML
Stars
262
Forks
194
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Currently the Process says in 6.2.7 License Grants from Non-Participants:

When a party who is not already obligated under the Patent Policy offers a change in class 3 or 4 (as described in § 6.2.3 Classes of Changes) to a technical report under this process the Team must request a recorded royalty-free patent commitment; for a change in class 4, the Team must secure such commitment.

I think this subtly misses the mark, because offering the change is not what is critical. Consider the two following situations:

  • Based on discussions within the WG, the WG resolves to make a specific substantive change. A non-member who follows the minutes of the WG and sees this resolution helpfully sends a Pull Request to implement the change, saving the Editor some time.
    → It would seem that the non-member is offering the change, and that we need to ask them to commit to the patent policy, even though their involvement isn't adding anything IPR related.
  • A WG member sends a Pull Request that makes a substantive change, which is not based on an idea they themselves had, but on something a non-member suggested and that they though was a good idea.
    → It would seem that the party "offering" the change is the member, so we can take it in without further IPR consideration, even though the substance of the change (and any IPR risk) comes from someone else.

I wonder if we wouldn't be better off with a rephrasing along the lines of:

When a proposal for a change in class 3 or 4 (as described in § 6.2.3 Classes of Changes) to a technical report under this process originates from or contains substantive contributions by a party not already obligated under the patent Policy, the Team must […remainder unchanged…]

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with §6.2.7, “License Grants from Non-Participants,” and compare its wording with §6.2.3, “Classes of Changes,” and the two scenarios in the issue. Evaluate whether the proposed “originates from or contains substantive contributions” wording better captures the intended patent-policy trigger, then update the Process text once the policy interpretation is agreed.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
html
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.