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I promised myself not write about OASIS anymore:
surely the most boring blogs on the otherwise
sparkling O'Reilly site! But there has been some news.
I blogged on the new OASIS patent policy a few weeks ago, commenting that the justifications given don't seem to match the policy. The same kind of thought seems to have occurred to others including RMS and Tim O'Reilly: there is a call to boycott OASIS standards that use RAND (Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory) licenses (rather than RF (Royalty Free) licenses.)
I like Patrick Gannon (we have spoken at the same seminars a couple of times): he is definitely not one of the baddies. And I suppose this puts him and the OASIS board into a difficult position: their new license tries to allow all positions.
But if there is currently no OASIS technology with royalties, and so few in the pipeline, as Mr Gannon says, why not just ditch the RAND provision entirely? Make all OASIS standards free or RF, and only allow RAND in an emergency with Board approval *after* a project has started? Treat it as a possible and worst-case outcome to an exceptional circumstance rather than just another option.
A policy like that would fit the justifications OASIS currently gives better. Maybe the new altered composition of the Board of Directors will provide an opportunity to get this right. We don't know who was voted in yet: if it was Bob Glushko, who I endorsed, then that might be a sign to the OASIS Board that there are a substantial number of their members who are keen that OASIS standards protect and cultivate the little boys: the big boys can always look after themselves.
OASIS is stuggling with a basic issue here: is the US patent system so out-of-control now that it is difficult for any standards body to operate?
So what do I think of the boycott proposal: A Call to Action in OASIS? Do not implement OASIS standards that aren't open. Demand that OASIS revise its policies. If you are an OASIS member, do not participate in any working group that allows encumbered standards that cannot be implemented in open source and free software.
...Sounds completely reasonable to me.
Comments (2)
Read More Entries by Rick Jelliffe.
It pains me to be paying money to OASIS
I'm an OASIS member. For the sole purpose of being able to
participate in maintenance of the DocBook specification. I'm an
individual member, so I'm paying US$250 a year to the
organization, out of my own pocket. I saw very little value for what I'm paying them, even before the IPR controversy came up.
In my experience, I have seen that the OASIS leadership seems to be fond of making unilateral decisions, without bothering to try to solicit feedback from their own membershop. Or, in the case of their decision to adopt this IPR policy, over the objections of members.
hmm, I guess "unilateral" may not be quite the right word. In the case of the IPR policy, I would guess that OASIS probably made a much more earnest attempt to solicit feedback from those of their member organizations that stood to benefit from having the IPR policy being writtent the way it ended up being written, and little or no attempt to solicit feedback from representat
leave your guns at the door..
when you take part in discussions or design and implementation of standards then you leave your patents and IP at the door.
If a standard isn't entirely in the public domain with at least public domain examples if not reference software, then it is essentially crippled.
If standards like TCP/IP, DNS, SMTP, HTML, XML, MIME, and CORBA were patent or other IP encumbered they would have died with the OSI network stack or Banyan Vines.