On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 9:11 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)verizon.net> wrote
Thanks for the summary post!
[...]
For the broader discussion, first of all, thanks to everyone who gave
their input here, it was tremendously valuable. As indicated earlier, we
didn't have this conversation to make an immediate decision at the
meeting. The board does want to maintain our commitment, as reflected in
both the foundation and the community, to free and open access to
knowledge. Along those lines, the earlier draft of a file format policy
will be revisited, and we may consider passing a revised version.
However, it's also not clear that this would be a good idea. One issue
would be if it inadvertently prohibits positive approaches in the
future, such as the uses for Flash that Brion mentioned. (At least,
nobody seemed to have a problem with those, please correct me if that's
not the case.) So I wonder if it might not be wiser to avoid attempting
something at the board level that requires us to pin down definitions
for file formats, platforms, and so on in ways that may have unintended
consequences. Further feedback and discussion is welcome.
Well, since you've opened it up to discussion...!
As Michael says, there weren't really any hard decisions made on this
-- more of a discussion of our varying points of view and reasoning.
And so I will give my own opinion in response to his: I'm in favor of
having a firm resolution so there is some clear and definite text to
point to that says we do have that commitment to openness, and gives a
set of criteria to evaluate a new proposal with. (It's possible the
drafting may turn out to exclude something we all agree should be
permitted, or have other unintended consequences, in which case I
think we could all agree to amend it! I don't believe the current
proposal disallows anything we would allow -- in particular it takes
into account things like acceptable subsets of otherwise problematic
formats -- but I hope people will correct obvious omissions in the
posted draft.) But I think it would be worthwhile to have as an
explanation of what we're doing -- or not doing -- and why.
[...]
Finally,
I'll just save the chapter business for a separate email in the next day
or so.
Well, now you're just leaving people in suspense! :-)
Cheers,
Kat
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