WHATWG IPR considerations

[andreubotella]

Yesterday in the ECMA ExeCom, @cwilso and @hober pointed out that, in order to be able to submit PRs to the WHATWG Fetch spec with the recommendations made by WinterTC, everyone who was a "main contributor" in making those decisions must be covered by the WHATWG participation agreement, individually or as part of an entity.

It's not fully clear to me what "main contributor" entails, and determining this is also tricky since we don't have detailed notes of every word said in every WinterTC meetings, we only have minutes detailing the major points of discussion and the conclusions, as well as listing the attendees.

Edit: Just to be clear, this does not need to be signed right now. It just needs to be done by the time that we send the first PR to the Fetch spec.

That said, the following people can be definitely said to be main contributors to the WinterTC fetch workstream:

• @lucacasonato, contributing on behalf of Deno Land Inc
• @andreubotella, contributing on behalf of Igalia, S.L.
• @jasnell, contributing on behalf of Cloudflare
• @Ethan-Arrowood, who AFAICT isn't covered by the WHATWG participation agreement

Additionally, the following people participated in the discussions in the meetings, but I'm not sure if they would count as main contributions:

• @thescientist13, who AFAICT isn't covered by the WHATWG participation agreement
• @panva, who AFAICT isn't covered by the WHATWG participation agreement

The following WinterTC members and invited experts also attended at least one meeting where changes to fetch were discussed, but they aren't mentioned in the minutes for that section (with one exception), and I don't recall them contributing significantly to those discussions. Out of them, as far as I can tell only @ctcpip is covered by the WHATWG participation agreement:

• @load1n9
• @lino-levan. He does show up in the March 6th 2025 minutes on a topic related to fetch, but his contribution is related to the scope of WinterTC's work on fetch, rather than on any proposed changes to the fetch spec.
• @ctcpip
• @LePichu
• @eliassjogreen
• @pi0
• @thomasballinger
• @sgammon

(Sorry for pinging everyone!)

[Ethan-Arrowood]

Is this because neither my previous organization nor my current one are WHATWG / ECMA organizations?

What do I need to do as an individual to accept this agreement?

Absolutely don't want to be a blocker / issue here.

[lino-levan]

^

Same feelings as Ethan. What can I do to unblock this IPR issue?

[andreubotella]

Is this because neither my previous organization nor my current one are WHATWG / ECMA organizations?

What do I need to do as an individual to accept this agreement?

Absolutely don't want to be a blocker / issue here.

@Ethan-Arrowood I think you only became a WinterTC invited expert under your new organization, right? In that case, you should have someone who is authorized to represent that organization sign the WHATWG entity participation agreement.

Edit: This is unrelated to Ecma membership. The goal of the WinterTC fetch workstream is to make PRs to the WHATWG Fetch specification, and any contribution to a WHATWG spec needs to be covered under WHATWG's IPR agreements. I had not realized until now that this requirement also applied to the decisions we made as part of WinterTC that would affect the content of those PRs.

^

Same feelings as Ethan. What can I do to unblock this IPR issue?

@lino-levan In your case I'm not sure you count as a main contributor, but you can still sign the agreement just in case. I believe you are not contributing on behalf of your employer, which also does not work in "the field of web technologies" as defined in https://whatwg.org/ipr-policy#210-field-of-web-technologies. If so, you can sign the WHATWG individual participation agreement.

[Ethan-Arrowood]

Okay that seems reasonable. Yes I became an invited expert recently because my current employer is not an ECMA member. And correction; my previous employer was/is an ECMA member. So then yes myself or my company needs to review and sign this agreement.

Would it be simpler if for now I sign it as an individual?

[andreubotella]

Would it be simpler if for now I sign it as an individual?

I'm not sure about that; this is different from Ecma invited experts. You might want to join the WHATWG Matrix room and ask about it.

[andreubotella]

Edited the OP to make it clear that this doesn't need to be done now, it just needs to have been done before we send the first PR to fetch.

[sgammon]

@andreubotella Thanks for raising this; I've signed on behalf of Elide

[Ethan-Arrowood]

@andreubotella Myself and Harper have submitted the Entity Participation Agreement or my participation on all WHATWG workstreams 😄