Non participant commitment

This is Team guidance for implementation of Process 6.2.6. If you have any IPR questions, and for substantial contributions, please contact team-legal.

When a non-Member (or not-yet-identified Member) makes a pull request contribution to a W3C Working Group repository, the repository manager tool flags it for review and sends them an email with this text to the contributor, chairs, and staff contacts.

1. If the contributor is a Member participating in the WG, link the GitHub account to the Member-affiliated W3C account and re-validate.

2. If the contributor is a Member not participating in the WG, first encourage them to join the WG. If they won’t, and this is a one-off contribution, follow the flow below.

3. If the contribution is non-substantive, e.g. fixing a typo, mark it as non-substantive (which clears the IPR flag).

4. If the contributor is not an affiliate of a current W3C Member, the Team follows up with them to see:

   • Do they work for an organization who should be a Member?

     1. Try to recruit them to membership

     2. Get a non-participant license commitment

   • Are they independent?

     1. Should we invite them as an Invited Expert?

     2. Get a non-participant license commitment from the repository manager. See the project review slides for more details on how to get the non-participant licensing commitment