Proposed Permissive Copyright Experiment in HTML Working Group

Today the W3C Director proposed to the W3C Membership a draft revision to the HTML Working Group charter. The charter is unique because of a provision that would let the group decide whether to publish extension specifications under CC-BY, which is more permissive than W3C's Document License. The proposal intends to encourage collaboration.

The W3C Membership reviewed a draft HTML Working Group charter in February when one Member registered a Formal Objection and requested changes around licensing. Given the importance of this issue and a new proposal focused on extension specifications, the Director now seeks feedback from the Membership.

This is not the first time have discussed licensing of specifications published by the HTML Working Group. In previous discussions we did not reach consensus around a licensing change. The HTML extension specifications present an opportunity to experiment with an alternate, more permissive license, in response to Member feedback. We anticipate that the experiment can inform broader licensing discussions.

We look forward to hearing from the full Membership on this important topic; Member feedback will play an important role in our next steps. I expect to have a public update in early June after the close of the charter review.