Relicensing Unfinished W3C Specifications

At times W3C may stop work on a specification, but some in the community may wish to continue working on it. This proposal describes how W3C relicenses unfinished specifications.

Status: This policy was enacted on 5 December 2014 following two reviews by the Membership. Learn more about W3C policies and legal information.

Examples of Use Cases

• A Working Group has been chartered to develop a Foo Recommendation. After significant investment, the group decides to stop work on the specification, for example because it decides there is not enough interest to continue having the work in its Charter. However, some participants in the Working Group are still interested in completing work on this approach, for example, in a W3C Community Group.
• A Working Group is about to close and W3C has no plans to continue developing the specification in another Working Group. Users of the developing draft want to be able to continue the work.

Note: This proposal is for a procedure to request relicensing of abandoned, unfinished specifications. It does not preclude the possibility of other procedures for relicensing other classes of specifications, or discussions of broader changes the W3C Document License.

Eligible and Ineligible Specifications

Only certain specifications are eligible to be relicensed under this policy.

Eligible Specifications

Working Drafts, Candidate Recommendations, and Proposed [Edited] Recommendations, either:

• where a Working Group was chartered to advance to Recommendation but made a consensus decision to stop work before the specification was published as a Recommendation, or
• where the group closed before the specification was published as a Recommendation.

Only material not previously published in a W3C Recommendation is eligible for relicensing.

Ineligible Specifications

These ineligibility provisions take precedence over the eligibility provisions.

• W3C Recommendations
• Portions of W3C Recommendations that are included in subsequent specifications (e.g., revised Recommendations).
• Specifications where W3C has announced a plan for some other Working Group to take up the specification in question (e.g., via a proposed charter, or advance notice to the Membership).
• Specifications abandoned due to patent licensing concerns.

Requests to Relicense

The Director is responsible for starting W3C Member review of proposals to relicense an eligible specification (according to the process below).

Anyone can request that the Director initiate a Member review. Typically, that request will come from a Working Group, a key contributor, or an organization wishing to further the work.

A complete request must:

• Identify which eligible specification is to be relicensed.
• Identify which portions should be relicensed, or the entire specification.
• Include rationale for relicensing.
• Indicate whether there was a Working Group decision to request to relicense, with a link to a record of the decision.

The Director will not generally initiate the review process for ineligible specifications or incomplete requests.

Working Group Input

Before the Director sends a a proposal to the Membership, he takes into account the views of the responsible Working Group.

Assessing Working Group consensus on relicensing abandoned work

If the Working Group still exists and the Working Group did not initiate the request to relicense, the Director must send a request to the responsible Working Group asking whether there is a consensus to support the request to relicense. The Chairs are expected to provide a response within 4 weeks.

Past Editors

For both active and past Working Groups, the Director must make a good faith attempt to notify past editors of the specification of the intent to relicense the specification.

AC Review and Public Notice

Advisory Committee Formal Review

The Director must send the Advisory Committee a call for review of a proposal to relicense. The call for review must:

• Identify which precise specification (or precise portions of that specification) are to be relicensed
• Identify which party or parties requested to relicense and provide any rationale for relicensing included in the original request.
• Indicate the level of support by the responsible Working Group for the proposal (consensus, objections, or no response within 4 weeks after request).
• Indicate the proposed license(s) for republication.
• Include instructions for how Members and public provide feedback.

The review period must last at least 4 weeks.

Public Notice

The W3C staff notifies the public on public-review-announce@w3.org and on the W3C home page.

Decision and Appeal

Decision

The Director must announce the decision (to relicense or not) to the Advisory Committee and public.

If the Director chooses not to relicense the specification, the Director must provide rationale for the decision. Rationale may include, but is not limited to, the following reasons that may come to light as a result of review (which is why they are listed here and not in the section on ineligible specifications):

• A specification is not yet a Recommendation, but it is widely deployed, and relicensing could create a high risk of fragmentation.
• Publication of the specification under a permissive license would propagate harmful technology.
• The Director determines that the work should not stop on the specification.

There is no minimum threshold of Advisory Committee support for a proposal to relicense a specification under this policy.

Appeal

If the Director decides not to relicense, the Advisory Committee may appeal the decision. If the Director decides to relicense, the Advisory Committee may appeal the decision only if there was a Formal Objection. In both cases, W3C follows the AC appeal process.

Publication

When the Director's decision is to relicense:

• Publication must not happen while there is possibility of an appeal (see the AC appeal process for time limits on appeal).
• If the Specification is not a W3C Note, it is published as one with the new license. Otherwise, the Note is updated in place with the new license.
• If the proposal was to relicense a portion of a specification, that portion is published as a Note with the new license.
• The W3C Webmaster will update the "latest version URI" for the specification series to refer to the relicensed instance.

Preferred Copyright Licenses

The Director's preferred license will be the Software and Document License.

If portions of a specification were originally licensed under the W3C Software License, that should continue in the relicensed version.

Patent Licenses

Patent licensing commitments under the W3C Patent Policy apply only to W3C Recommendations. Therefore, because specification relicensed under this policy are not Recommendations, there are no new licensing obligations created by this policy.