Subject: PNG Agenda

From: Steve Carson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 19:09:27 -0600

PNG Agenda for Metafiles RG in Kista
------------------------------------

This is a follow-up to the earlier preliminary announcement to the SC24
reflector. It is being distributed both to Metafiles RG participants and to
the full reflector, so some of you may get two copies.

This mail has several parts:

1) Purpose of the meeting
2) Final agenda for the PNG discussions at Kista
3) W3C Contact
4) Location of the Baseline PNG Document
5) Background Info on Intellectual Property Issues

Purpose of the meeting
----------------------

To determine whether SC24 will initiate a New Work Item Proposal to process
the W3C Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification as an ISO/IEC Standard.

Final agenda for the PNG discussions at Kista
---------------------------------------------

Friday 23 May : (following afternoon break) One hour (approximate) Tutorial
on PNG by Chris Lilly of W3C. Question and answer session for the remainder
of the day.

Saturday 24 May: All morning is set aside for PNG discussions, from
whatever the agreed start time for that day is up to the lunch break. The
agenda items are:

1. Discussion of whether or not to initiate work in SC24 based on PNG
2. Intellectual Property Issues
3. Review of draft Letter of Intent to proceed with the work
4. Review of draft Cooperative agreement (including discussion of the exact
terms and conditions that W3C and SC24 mutually agree to; this will include
schedule constraints and permissible modifications to the base document.)
5. Proposing W3C as a Class C Liaison to SC24 for this project
5. Drafting (or outlining) of recommendations to WG6

W3C Contact
-----------

Those of you who are also involved in W3C may want to know our contact
there. It is Chris Lilley. He will be at the Kista meeting to work with us.
Here is his contact information:

Chris Lilley, W3C                          [ http://www.w3.org/ ]
Graphics and Fonts Guy            The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/people/chris/              INRIA,  Projet W3C
[email-masked]                       2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
+33 (0)4 93 65 79 87       06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Location of the Baseline PNG Document
-------------------------------------

Chris Lilly furnished this information for us:

The canonical reference is

  http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/REC-png
                            ^^
                            Technical Reports

for ease of browsing - rather than reference - a multi-file version
(derived automatically from a master copy which also produced the
single-file version) is available:

  http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/REC-png-multi

The document is available (using content negotiation) in html, html.gz,
text, text.gz, PostScript, PostScript.gz and PDF. Additional information
is available at

  http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Graphics/PNG

[1] The PNG Recommendation contains this list of changes since the
Tenth Draft of 5 May, 1995:

     Clarified meaning of a suggested-palette PLTE chunk in a truecolor
       image that uses transparency
     Clarified exact semantics of sBIT and allowed sample depth
       scaling procedures
     Clarified status of spaces in tEXt chunk keywords
     Distinguished private and public extension values in type and
       method fields
     Added a "Creation Time" tEXt keyword
     Macintosh representation of PNG specified
     Added discussion of security issues
     Added more extensive discussion of gamma and chromaticity
       handling, including tutorial appendixes
     Clarified terminology, notably sample depth vs. bit depth
     Added a glossary
     Editing and reformatting

The clarification, editing and reformatting was fairly extensive and was
greatly helped by W3C member review wihlst the specification was at Proposed
Recommendation stage. In particular I would like to acknowledge the detailed
comments from Bob Hopgood at that time, which were a great aid to clarity and
consistency.

Background Info on Intellectual Property Issues
-----------------------------------------------
The PNG specification contains this notice regarding Intellectual Property
Rights (IPR):

- - -

W3C COPYRIGHT NOTICE

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Copyright © 1996 by: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 

This W3C specification is being provided by the copyright holders under the
following license. By obtaining, using and/or copying this specification,
you agree that you have read, understood, and will comply with the
following terms and conditions: 

Permission to use, copy, and distribute this specification for any purpose
and without fee or royalty is hereby granted, provided that the full text
of this NOTICE appears on ALL copies of the specification or portions
thereof, including modifications, that you make. 

THIS SPECIFICATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS," AND COPYRIGHT HOLDERS MAKE NO
REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, BUT
NOT LIMITATION, COPYRIGHT HOLDERS MAKE NO
REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY
PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF THE SPECIFICATION WILL NOT INFRINGE
ANY THIRD PARTY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS OR OTHER RIGHTS. COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS WILL BEAR NO LIABILITY FOR ANY USE OF THIS SPECIFICATION. 

The name and trademarks of copyright holders may NOT be used in advertising
or publicity pertaining to the specification without specific, written
prior permission. Title to copyright in this specification and any
associated documentation will at all times remain with copyright holders. 

- - -

This copyright notice was sent to ISO/CS for review and they have given us
this advice:

From: [email-masked] (Chabot, Jacques-Olivier)
To: "Carson, Steve" <[email-masked]>
Subject: A copyright issue
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 97 16:32:00 GMT
Encoding: 28 TEXT

Dear Mr. Carson,

Keith Brannon has transferred to me your question regarding copyright issues 
in respect of JTC1/SC24 using the PNG specifications for the preparation of 
an ISO/IEC standard.

As you know, ISO claims the copyright on all its standards. In addition our 
rule is that our members must have the possibility to implement any ISO 
standard as a national standard, in which case they will similarly claim 
copyright on the national adoption. It  would therefore be easier if you 
could obtain from MIT and/or W3C a full copyright release.

If this is not possible, then we should further discuss with a view to have 
MIT and/or W3C agree to transfer to ISO/IEC, all the publication and 
distribution rights for the International Standard that you are preparing, 
as well as extending these rights to ISO/IEC members wishing to adopt this 
International Standard as a national standard.
This would also imply the rights of both organizations and their members to 
publish electronic versions, as well as secondary publications of this 
International Standard.

I hope this answers correctly your questions and please feel free to contact 
me should you need any additional information.

Yours sincerely,
Jacques-Olivier Chabot
Director
General Services and Marketing

---------------------------------------------------------
Steve Carson                 phone:   +1-505-521-7399
GSC Associates Inc.          fax:     +1-505-521-9321
5272 Redman Road             e-mail:  [email-masked]
Las Cruces, NM 88011 USA
---------------------------------------------------------