I did some more research on the wording below and, believe it or not,
have now come to the conclusion that it's better not to advance it as a
standing rule. Here are my reasons:
- We felt most comfortable avoding "MUST"-type phrasing, and yet
I found that several people have had considerable confusion about
how "SHOULD"-like the "It is a goal..." phrasing really was.
Since the standard OASIS policy allows us to treat opportunities
case-by-case anyway, and since our chosen wording below has no
legal teeth by design, we lose nothing by using the default OASIS
policy.
- My understanding is that the OASIS board is carefully scrutinizing
all TC-specific IPR policies, and to date has only approved one
formulation: the one used in the LegalXML TCs. Even though the
wording below is close to the approved wording, the differences
are there by design and could hang us up with a lot of process.
- This TC has had a lot of success to date in working with owners
of disclosed SAML-related patents to ensure an environment that
is as "safe and friendly" as possible for implementors. This
already demonstrates to the world, in a robust fashion, what
our commitment is.
In sum, it seems like more trouble than it's worth to pursue this
standing rule at this time. So I will not be making this motion...
Eve
Eve L. Maler wrote:
> In today's telecon, we approved a newly clarified charter, and also
> began to approve standing rules that will be linked to from the charter.
> We have approved two so far; the rule related to IPR remains to be
> decided on.
>
> We are planning to vote on the following standing rule in our next
> telecon on March 4th. Please use this time to check with your corporate
> attorneys as necessary. One idea that came up on the mailing list and
> in today's call was to simplify the wording to make it easier for
> implementors to understand; while we ultimately backed off from this
> idea in order to stick closely to wording that's already in use in the
> LegalXML TCs, if you feel this is important, please look into the
> acceptable possibilities for doing do with your experts on hand.
>
> "It is the goal of the TC not to approve any technical specification if
> it believes that the use, distribution, or implementation of such
> specification would require the unauthorized infringement of any third
> party rights known to the TC, and such third party has not agreed to
> provide and openly specify necessary license rights on perpetual,
> royalty-free, non-discriminatory terms."
>
> If you have suggestions or questions, please post them as a response to
> this message.
>
> Eve
>
--
Eve Maler +1 781 442 3190
Sun Microsystems cell +1 781 354 9441
Web Technologies and Standards eve.maler @ sun.com
