Update IPR policy to introduce BSD 3-Clause license

[foolip]

Closes #114.

[foolip]

45 days have passed and we should now merge this and go ahead with the implementation in each spec repo. @dbaron @travisleithead, there's nothing new here, but can I have your approval, given that this is changing our policies?

[annevk]

I don't mind doing this, but I think it would be somewhat preferable if we also worked out the changes to https://github.com/whatwg/spec-factory and individual specifications.

Shouldn't https://whatwg.org/workstream-policy#notice-for-living-standards change as well?

And https://github.com/whatwg/participate.whatwg.org/blob/master/views/agreement.hbs?

[othermaciej]

Yes, the notice should change. It would be an improvement to do that in the same PR. Suggestion:

Copyright © YEAR WHATWG (Apple, Google, Mozilla, Microsoft). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Alternatively, this work is licensed under the [BSD 3-Clause License] for incorporation into software.

I also agree that the participant agreement should also be updated to link the new definitions in the IPR Policy. Too tired to have a concrete suggestion.

[othermaciej]

(My suggestion should probably have at least cursory legal review.)

[foolip]

I've made a checklist in #114 (comment). I'll take a look at the Workstream Policy.md change now.

[foolip]

@othermaciej, I have applied your suggestion on notice wording in 5e32a85 and therefore also rerequested your review.

That change also updates the LICENSE file, which would then be copied verbatim to LICENSE.template in spec-factory.

To explain why these changes are only being done now, the original plan called for "For purposes of implementing a WHATWG Living Standard or Review Draft, WHATWG releases portions of the Living Standard, Review Draft or documents referenced therein under the BSD 3-Clause License for incorporation into software." to be the wording in our IPR policy, in specs and in LICENSE files.

However, the wording across policy and notices isn't the exact same for the CC-BY license, and putting "Living Standard or Review Draft" in a document which we know to be one or the other looks odd. Maciej's suggestion for the notice wording seems sensible to me.

But, I think we'll have to circle back to get legal input on that notice wording.

[dbaron]

My one concern is that the edit to IPR Policy.md says "portions of", whereas the edit to LICENSE and the 3 (?) edits to Workstream Policy.md say "this work". That seems a bit inconsistent. (Were those 2 sets of changes made at different times?)

[othermaciej]

The scope of "portions of" was unclear so I wasn't sure what to say. Does "portions of" mean portions we are supposed to identify up front for each spec, or does it mean whoever is using it may choose any portion? I was worried that saying "portions of" in the copyright notice would suggest to people something even less clear, which is that some portions are dual-licensed, but we can't say which portions because we're not sure.

Expanding a bit: I think we specifically rejected this dual license being limited to things like IDL, data files or code samples. So that's not what the "portions" language means. I'm assuming it's a portion chosen by whoever is copying from the spec, and thus perhaps equivalent to dual-licensing the whole work.

[foolip]

The SG has met with our legal counsel and asked if we can instead go with a more straightforward dual-licensing wording in the copyright notice.

[othermaciej]

Could we consider splitting this PR? It seems there's no complications or open issues with the "field of web technologies" definition, so that could land now. But the BSD 3-clause change requires changes to additional documents and potentially legal advice, so not quite ready to land. It would be a shame if the "field of web technologies" improvement was also held up because of this.

[othermaciej]

For the "field of web technologies" portion of this change, ideally the Contributor and Workstream Participant Agreement should be updated to link "work in the field of web technologies" to the new definition in the IPR policy. That's in a separate repo, so would have to be in a separate PR.

[foolip]

@othermaciej good idea, I've sent #129 for just the FoWT update. I'll also prepare a change for participate.whatwg.org.

[foolip]

This PR has been updated by integrating changes from #149 and some additional changes by me.

New review of all @whatwg/sg would be great.

I'd like to call special attention to 6dad672. The wording for "Other documents" was updated back in ac8dc6f but then not fixed for the new "to the extent" wording. To resolve it I've suggested simply "Documents other than [Living Standards] and [Review Drafts] are published under a license (or license waiver) specified by the [Steering Group]"

[travisleithead]

Most recent updates LGTM. Note, there is an outstanding issue about the Notice text language that Maciej raised for additional clarity that the the LWG are considering.

[travisleithead]

Feedback from the SG/LWG meeting 11/20/2020.

[foolip]

I'm not able to approve as I created this PR, but I'm happy with the state of the PR after applying the changes.

All four SG members have approved at some point now, and while another look might be good from someone, I think we're good to go here.

[annevk]

I'm pretty sure there was a request to not self-host the BSD license and link to https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause in the respective places instead.

Addressed via commit.

[foolip]

This and #148 have been combined into #154. Minor differences have been resolved, and #154 is now exactly equivalent to merging these two older PR branches together.