On Nov 6, 2009, at 11:19 AM, ext Marcos Caceres wrote:
Hi Benoit,
2009/11/3 SUZANNE Benoit RD-SIRP-ISS <benoit.suza...@orange-
ftgroup.com>
All,
Reviewing the spec there is no access to the License attribute.
Shouldn’t it be added in the liste of the accessible attributes?
Thank you for raising this important issue.
The reason we will not be including license as an attribute is that
there are a number of legal issues and potential security
vulnerabilities associated with making the license available as an
interface. Some of the technical challenges are:
1. the license element can be a URI (which returns any content type
- which could be a script).
2. the license element can be a file (which can be any content type).
3. the license element can be a text content of the license element.
4. The license element can be a mix of 1 OR 2 AND 3.
I am not a lawyer, and the following are my personal opinions and
should not be construed as having any legal weight whatsoever. WRT
1, as user, I am legally concerned with the implications of having
a license that can change online without my consent. I'm not sure
how the law deals with that, so we leave it up to UAs. Also, what
happens if the license is unavailable upon request?
Because of 4, there is a possibility that the online license and
the license in the text content could contradict each other or
invalidate each other.
The above issues are only the tip of the iceberg. Implementers
should take caution implementing this feature and should probably
seek legal advice as to how best to proceed to protect consumers,
developers, and themselves.
Additionally, requests for new features for v1 ended when we agreed
to publish the 18-Aug-2009 LCWD.
-Regards, Art Barstow
