Please let us know by writing to site-policy@w3.org if you wish to contribute test cases or a test suite to W3C.
This document discusses patent, copyright, and liability issues surrounding the contribution of test cases to W3C. The purpose of this policy is to clarify the terms for contributing test cases to W3C and to facilitate contributions from Working Group Participants.
The following two provisions state the licensing obligations that test case Contributors must agree to in order for W3C to accept their contributions.
With respect to any Test Suites published as part of a W3C Recommendation, an Essential Claim as defined in the W3C Patent Policy is a claim that is necessarily infringed only when it is not possible to avoid infringing it because there is no non-infringing alternative for implementing a normative feature of the Recommendation in a manner that exhibits the behavior required by such Test Suite.
The remainder of this document is informative only.
To agree to Grant I or Grant II (which are online forms), you will need a W3C account. Those not already participating in W3C work can request one through the Public Access Request Form. Contributions made by employees of participating Members are covered by the W3C Patent Policy, whether or not those employees formally represent the Member in the Working Group.
To help foster confidence in the test suites, even in the case where a party has no patent licensing obligations for contributed test suites, we encourage Contributors to use Grant I, by which one agrees to the W3C Patent Policy Licensing Requirements.
Distribution of W3C Test Suites is governed by the Licenses for W3C Test Suites.
In order to protect the Contributor against liability that might appear if a third party relies on the contributed materials and encounters damage, Grant I and Grant II include a disclaimer. Materials retained for publication will be distributed carrying a similar disclaimer.
Each Working Group compiles contributed test cases into one or more test suites. The group also decides whether to publish the test suite(s) as part of a W3C Recommendation or outside the Recommendation. There are advantages to each approach:
If you hold copyright for a set of test cases and wish to transfer copyright to W3C at the same time as you contribute the test cases, please contact Wendy Seltzer at w3t-pr@w3.org.
This test suite contribution policy was developed by the W3C Team. This version of the policy supersedes the previous version.
This policy only applies to Contributions made after the date of the announcement of this policy. It applies to all W3C groups, not just those under the W3C Patent Policy.