24893 2014-03-02 23:08:43 +0000 Licensing for resources.whatwg.org not totally clear 2014-05-26 16:43:48 +0000 1 1 1 Unclassified WHATWG Unwelcome unspecified All All RESOLVED FIXED http://resources.whatwg.org/ P2 normal Unsorted 1 naesten mike annevk d ian mattraymond mike zcorpan sideshowbarker+unwelcome oldest_to_newest 101727 0 naesten 2014-03-02 23:08:43 +0000 [Okay, this is actually not at all HTML-specific, but I can't think where else to report it, given that <https://github.com/whatwg/resources.whatwg.org> has full issue tracking disabled, so you might want to clarify where such problems should be reported.] 1. I know you have a policy of liberal copyright licensing, but it's not totally clear exactly what license is meant to apply to the material in <http://resources.whatwg.org/>. Can this all be considered to be under the CC0, or is it more complicated than that? (Now, it's likely that many of the logos aren't even copyrightable in the US anyway, consisting as they do of nothing but simple geometric shapes and maybe a letterform. Well, that would apply to the PNGs, anyway; it seems that the points used to define the outlines of letterforms *are* considered at least potentially copyrightable, so the "?" in the SVGs could be covered by copyright ...) In any case, it's much simpler to just have a clear waiver/license in place rather than having to worry about all the legal complexities of whether or not the material is copyrightable. 2. It would also be nice if it was clearer who actually created the material and when: the only one for which this is clear is logo-streams.svg, where the commit message not only thanks a user but also links to the bug where the logo was created. The reason I want to know about all of this is that I want to upload all of the SVGs to commons.wikimedia.org, which has some rather arcane rituals involving copyright licensing and authorship that need to be followed ... 101772 1 ian 2014-03-03 19:36:32 +0000 The original "?" logo is used under license from Matthew Raymond. He made it in late July 2004. Dunno about the rest. 102227 2 naesten 2014-03-12 03:59:11 +0000 (In reply to Ian 'Hixie' Hickson from comment #1) > The original "?" logo is used under license from Matthew Raymond. He made it > in late July 2004. Dunno about the rest. Re-reading the thread revealed that he sent you this 256x256 PNG: <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WHATWG_logo_(Matthew_Raymond).png>; I'm not sure he ever actually said anything about licensing until he heard about <http://whattf.org>. As I suspected, this seems not to be copyrightable (which would also apply to the current PNG), though the SVG might well be (because of the path description for the question mark): <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:WHATWG_logo_(Matthew_Raymond).png>. 102463 3 annevk 2014-03-17 16:33:33 +0000 I suspect this is the status quo, anyone think otherwise? CONTRIBUTORS Anne van Kesteren Domenic Denicola Janessa Det Matthew Raymond Robbert Broersma Simon Pieters LICENSE CC0 102629 4 zcorpan 2014-03-19 12:38:25 +0000 My contributions to things in http://resources.whatwg.org/ are CC0. But also see https://github.com/whatwg/resources.whatwg.org/commit/4dbeecdce98e301c3f268252ff03a7dc12d560db 103018 5 annevk 2014-03-27 15:53:28 +0000 https://github.com/whatwg/resources.whatwg.org/commit/6220817daca895db6630960dbad0dc6d842d308a 103053 6 naesten 2014-03-27 22:10:36 +0000 (In reply to Anne from comment #5) > https://github.com/whatwg/resources.whatwg.org/commit/ > 6220817daca895db6630960dbad0dc6d842d308a > +* Matthew Raymond ... > +[](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) > +To the extent possible under law, the contributors have waived all copyright and related > +or neighboring rights to this work. Did you see this email where Matthew implies he has copyright on the logo, and that he might want to enforce it against some users at some point in the future: <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2006Nov/0331.html>? That seems like a good sign that this claim should not be made about him. I don't expect any of the others in this list to object, but it seems like the standard method for such [re]licensing tasks is to email everybody who contributed and ask for their explicit consent. 103077 7 annevk 2014-03-28 10:22:12 +0000 Emailed him with a pointer to this bug. Reopening for now. 106801 8 mattraymond 2014-05-26 16:43:48 +0000 (In reply to Anne from comment #3) > I suspect this is the status quo, anyone think otherwise? > > CONTRIBUTORS > > Anne van Kesteren > Domenic Denicola > Janessa Det > Matthew Raymond > Robbert Broersma > Simon Pieters > > LICENSE > > CC0 That's fine with me. License approved.